Khrushchev says Nyet

Having battled the crush at the Russians' Claridge's tea-fight (see above) without much success, Harold Stassen and his wife were on the point of going home when up barged Andrei Gromyko. "Have you met Khrushchev yet?" asked Gromyko, who is Stassen's opposite number on the five-man U.N. subcommittee meeting in London to discuss disarmament. Seconds later Stassen found himself in an inner sanctum, peeling grapes with the Kremlin's masters. For two hours he listened to the bluntest Russian talk yet on the subject of disarmament.

Until Khrushchev opened his mouth, the State Department had been feeling discreetly optimistic; all through the weary weeks Gromyko had asked pertinent questions and avoided flat answers. Perhaps the Russians really were seriously considering President Eisenhower's dramatic "open skies" proposal for mutual aerial reconnaissance. But to Stassen in the meeting room at Claridge's, Khrushchev said the whole U.S. plan was nothing but a trick to let U.S. planes photograph bomb targets in Russia. The U.S.S.R., he said, would never agree to it.

The Soviet Union, Khrushchev went on blandly, wants to cut armed forces right now--and worry about schemes for inspection later. He dismissed the U.S. plan as "too cautious." And he rejected U.S. insistence that German reunification must be a precondition of general disarmament, as "a package deal" that the Soviet would "never buy."

Gulping, "Quite a thorough discussion," Stassen rushed off from his two-hour chat to cable the worst to Washington. Next day Gromyko agreed to "consider" a few changes in the latest Russian plan, but Western diplomats interpreted this as a maneuver to fasten the propaganda blame on the U.S. should talks now end.

At their farewell press conference in Britain, B. & K. openly ridiculed the disarmament subcommittee. Bulganin hinted that it might better have been called the "subcommittee on concealing the arms race." When someone asked whether the Soviet Union would allow inspection teams to check Russian nuclear-weapon stocks, Khrushchev said jauntily: "Our comrade Gromyko has gone grey answering questions like that." Since there is not a grey hair in Gromyko's head, this got a laugh. Khrushchev then said: "It is my prophecy he will become grey by the time they agree."

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