Ring-Around-the-Rockets

Apart from talking test ban, Moscow was talking movies. One Aleksei Ro manov, Russia's commissar of the cutting room, announced last week that even though Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 had won first prize at the Moscow Interna tional Film Festival, it was far too pessimistic to be shown to the Russian peo ple. The criticism was unfair. The Fellini picture is all about a befuddled movie director who wants to dramatize the nuclear destruction of mankind but in stead surrenders himself to just loving everybody. "Let us all join hands," he cries as the whole cast dances a ring-around-the-rocket. "How simple life is. Let us live it together." That is precisely the Kremlin line about the virtues of the test ban treaty and the joys of peaceful coexistence. Off the screen, however, life is not quite as simple as that.

Status Seekers. With Secretary of State Dean Rusk and British Foreign Secretary Lord Home in Moscow this week for the formal treaty signing, oth er nations are only too eager to join hands and sign, too. Ironically, they are all non-nuclear powers, and except for a handful, they will never have a nucle ar capability. At week's end the following had agreed to sign: Afghanistan, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, East Germany, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Finland, India, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Laos, Li beria, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Soma lia, the U.A.R. and Uruguay. In addition, about 50 countries have shown an official "interest" in signing, and presumably will do so soon.

Most of the countries are merely using the test ban treaty for international politics. Examples: Israel, which is in fact working on an atomic bomb, is trying to show that it is just as peace-loving as Egypt's Nasser, and East Germany is trying to assert its status as a sovereign nation, though unrecognized as such by the West.

But France, the one power besides the three signatories that is close to having its own nuclear force, flatly refused to take part in the new test ban togetherness. And Charles de Gaulle promised to make his position clear.

For two days at his country home in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, he studied questions submitted in advance of a scheduled press conference and memorized the answers. At 3 p.m. on the appointed day, as the raspberry-red draperies parted in the Elysee Palace's gilt-encrusted Salle des Fetes, De Gaulle strode to the carpeted dais, and for the next 80 minutes delivered a virtual monologue to the assembled crowd of 900 correspondents, government officials and others.

Announcing that France would not sign the treaty, De Gaulle pointed out that, after all, it could not erase the dangers of nuclear war or slow down the arms race. Only complete disarmament could do that, and De Gaulle suggested a four-power conference to discuss "practical" measures, such as the dismantling of nuclear delivery systems. De Gaulle, of course, knows perfectly well that there is virtually no chance of that happening in the foreseeable future. But the Moscow agreement, he said sarcastically, is so innocuous that it "cannot inconvenience anybody, and in any case, not us. France will not be diverted from equipping herself with the means of immeasurable destruction possessed by the other powers." If France disbanded its own embryonic force de frappe, De Gaulle explained, "her own security and her own independence would never more belong to her."

As for a possible nonaggression agreement between NATO and the Warsaw pact, which Russia & Co. are discussing in Moscow this week, De Gaulle dismissed it scornfully as "this assimilation between the Atlantic Alliance and Communist servitude." As if to illustrate the dangers of such "assimilation," he recalled Yalta, "that lamentable conference," which settled the fate of Eastern Europe. At any rate, said De Gaulle, the nonaggression proposal was the subject of "separate negotiations between the Anglo-Saxons and the Soviets, so far in the absence of the Europeans." France would not "subscribe to some arrangement that would be carried out above her head."

Fancied Wounds. While noting with utmost satisfaction France's new economic independence of the U.S., De Gaulle offered a paean to U.S.-French friendship since the Revolutionary War. Pouring on the "Lafayette sauce," as one Gaullist aide described it, he declared that "for the U.S. to imagine that France seeks to harm it would be ridiculous and absurd." In the case of war, France would stand with the U.S.: "The alliance is beyond question, except in the fancies of those who make it their profession to alarm the people by depicting each scratch as an incurable wound." One scratch: "Fits and starts of what in the U.S. they like to call public opinion."

De Gaulle's words, though haughty as always, lacked the venomous sarcasm of his performance in January, when he vetoed Britain's application to the Common Market. Washington is now sure that De Gaulle wants to visit the U.S.--the trip will probably occur early next year--and that he is just a shade readier than before to listen to U.S. proposals. In essence, the U.S. is willing to pass along nuclear know-how if, in exchange, the French are willing to accept some form of multilateral deterrent. President Kennedy indicated in his own press conference last week that the U.S. recognizes France as an atomic power and might offer new technology that would not require additional testing, depending on "what kind of a cooperative effort" France would be willing to make. But so far at least, De Gaulle apparently does not want to be indebted to the U.S. for nuclear know-how or anything else, and certainly not if it means giving up the grandiose independence of his embryonic deterrent.

"Wild Men." West Germany was delighted with De Gaulle's performance. Bonn is equally upset over the Moscow negotiations, fears that a combination of the test ban treaty and a nonaggression formula would raise the diplomatic status of East Germany, thus eroding the stubborn hope of eventual German reunification. Kennedy sought to soothe this worry by restating the U.S. pledge of peaceful reunification. Moreover, he pointed out that countries that do not recognize each other nevertheless sign treaties. (One example: the Laos truce agreement, signed by the U.S. and Red China.) The fact remains that a non-aggression agreement, beyond the unilateral pledges already made by NATO, would be taken as a formal recognition of the European status quo, and that could only help Khrushchev unless the West were to obtain significant concessions in return.

In a personal letter to Kennedy, Khrushchev asked the President to realize that he, too, was up against political pressures. Meeting in Moscow, Comecon, the pallid satellite version of the West's Common Market, formally approved the test ban treaty, with Rumania somewhat belatedly in line after a brief flirtation with Peking. As for the Chinese, they denounced the treaty as nothing less than a U.S.-Russian alliance, accused Moscow of perpetrating "a dirty fraud," and of "selling out" Communists everywhere, "including the people of China." The Soviets replied in kind, called the Red Chinese "wild men" who borrow their arguments against the test ban from De Gaulle. "Sooner or later," said Pravda, "the madmen will have to shut up." And Khrushchev optimistically and probably accurately told Test Ban Negotiator Averell Harriman that it will be "a long time" before Peking has its own nuclear bombs.

Meanwhile the West continued its somewhat halting ring-around-the-rock-ets. Arriving in Moscow (his first visit), Dean Rusk struck a neorealistic note: "This test ban is an important event. It could become a historic event. That depends upon what follows." Then he settled down with Britain's Lord Home and Russia's Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko for a series of conferences to see where, after the opening sequence of the test ban, the new Moscow script might lead.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.