Foreign Relations: Consular Convention

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There was the White House-Kremlin hot line, then the test ban treaty—and now a U.S.-U.S.S.R. consular convention to promote trade and to protect the citizens of each country while traveling in the other.

President Johnson announced the pact, said it would be signed this week. Under it, each nation may open consulates outside the capital cities, possibly in Leningrad and Chicago. The pact requires that whenever one nation arrests a citizen of the other, it must notify the other nation within three days, permit a visit from the prisoner's countrymen within, four days. It is the first bilateral treaty between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., and will, of course, require ratification by the U.S. Senate.