The Happy Hot-Dog Eater

Russia's Armenian-born diplomatic rug peddler was the image of public affability.

No sooner did Soviet First Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan arrive in New York last week, after 24 days of confabs with Castro, than he began posing for photographers while chomping hot dogs in the fashion of an old Brooklyn Dodgers fan. He spent a friendly evening with U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, much of it occupied by discussion of such matters as Pushkin's short stories. Bantering with newsmen, Mikoyan cracked that Stevenson was "more difficult" than Castro.

Even so, he loved them both--"Stevenson da, Castro da," But it was nyet, nyet, nyet when Mikoyan settled down to serious discussion of Cuba. During Mikoyan's small-talk sessions with Stevenson, some U.S. officials spoke of the possibility that the Russian was waiting to see President Kennedy before really doing business.

The fact could hardly have been further from the hope. Mikoyan flew from New York to Washington, spent more than three hours with Kennedy, who was flanked by State Secretary Dean Rusk and former Ambassador to Moscow Llewellyn ("Tommy'') Thompson. Kennedy found himself enjoying the matching of wits with Mikoyan, and the dueling went straight on without the coffee break that has become customary during such afternoon sessions in the President's office. But when the two were done, they were still where they had started.

Kennedy stuck steadfastly to the key U.S. position: there must be inspection of Cuba by an international group to make sure that all the missiles and bombers were gone. The President read to Mikoyan the parts of Khrushchev's letters, both public and private, in which the Premier spelled out his promise to allow on-site inspection.

Mikoyan argued back that the Soviet Union had already done so much to meet Kennedy's demands for withdrawing offensive weapons that there really was no need for any inspection. Mikoyan even had the effrontery to endorse Castro's preposterous position that he would permit U.N. inspection of Cuba only if the U.S.

would allow U.N. inspection of U.S. areas where--by Castro's claims--Cuban exiles and U.S. troops were still preparing to invade the island.

Next day. Mikoyan and Rusk lunched and talked for nearly three hours without making any progress. At week's end, Anastas Mikoyan headed home, presumably to report to Khrushchev. Communist ways being what they are, there was no telling what he would say--but he certainly could not claim that he had sold the U.S. any rugs.

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