controls which now are imposed on the movements of foreigners in the Soviet Union will be reduced. The United States is prepared to reduce, on a basis of reciprocity, the controls which we imposed on Soviet citizens as a result of the restrictions in the USSR.

Due to the lack of adequate protection afforded to American citizens in the Soviet bloc countries, the United States Government imposed passport restrictions in 1952 on the travel of Americans to the countries of Eastern Europe. These are being removed today. Hereafter, American passports will be valid for the Soviet Union and all the countries of Eastern Europe with which the United States maintains relations. Trade

The third aspect of contacts relates to peaceful trade. So far as strategic trade is concerned, I support fully the observations which Mr. Macmillan and M. Pinay have already made. Strategic trade is a matter of security concern and is clearly outside the purview of Item III of the Directive, which speaks of "peaceful trade". The restrictions which govern strategic trade are a consequence, not a cause, of tensions, and involve only a very narrow portion of the wide area of potential trade.

To a trading nation such as the United States, peaceful foreign trade is most important. However, it is conducted by the United States primarily as a matter of individual enterprise in response to commercial motivation.

United States exporters and importers buy and sell a tremendous range of diverse things. Judging from our limited knowledge of the present conditions of life within the Soviet bloc, there would seem to be a great number of United States materials and products, as well as those of other Western countries, which could fill immediate needs.

The state of trade, however, stands in marked contrast to this appraisal. Although the Western countries continue to offer Eastern Europe ready access to an enormous area of potential trade, the level of trade between them is still low as compared with pre-war years and is only a very small proportion of total world trade and of the trade of most Western countries.

Plainly the reason for the continued low level of East-West trade has been an unwillingness or lack of interest on the part of the Soviet Union. While talking generalities about trade, the Soviet Government has continued to confine its international trade even in the case of peaceful goods, within strict controls and the rigidities of bilateral, barter trade arrangements. It has pursued a policy of economic nationalism and regionalism which ignores the benefits of free exchanges. In contrast, the Western nations have sought to widen the multilateral base of their trade and to increase the extent to which each of them shares in the international division of labor. Trade in peaceful goods between the members of the non-Communist world has risen to an unprecedented level. The same opportunities have been

1 See statement of May 1, 1952, by the Department of State; infra, p. 2084. 2 See statement of Oct. 31, 1955, by the Department of State; infra, p. 2085. 3 The Geneva Meeting of Foreign Ministers, pp. 228-233.

and are now offered by the Western nations to the Soviet bloc countries.

The general question of Soviet interest in peaceful international trade can only be answered in specific terms. Is the Soviet Union now prepared to expand its exports sufficiently to make possible a much higher level of trade with the West? If so, what goods will be available? If the USSR believes that serious obstacles to peaceful trade exist on the Western side, we want to know what they are. Before coming here to Geneva, I consulted with the heads of the appropriate departments of my Government and arranged for progressively simplifying certain of our operating procedures concerning exports to the Soviet bloc countries, so that the pathway to commercial enterprise might become smoother.

These measures can facilitate trade, but they cannot produce trade where commercial incentive is lacking or where Western interest in trade is not reciprocated in Eastern Europe. The discussions here, it is hoped, will disclose the specific steps which can be taken to increase the peaceful trade between the West and Eastern Europe. We shall await with sympathetic interest the suggestions which the representatives of the Soviet Union may make upon this subject.

We agreed at New York that detailed discussion at Geneva of EastWest contacts would be left to our experts. As the United States expert, I have appointed Mr. William H. Jackson. He is serving not merely at my request but at the personal request of President Eisenhower.

I hope that the experts may begin their important task without delay. I would suggest that they make a careful study of specific projects in the field of improved contacts and prepare recommendations concerning their implementation, including procedures which could be developed through the organs and agencies of the United Nations.

We shall eagerly await the results of the experts' work, which contains so much of hope and promise for a better and more peaceful world.

45. STATEMENT BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE,

1 NOVEMBER 14, 1955 1

This item of East-West contacts, although last on our Agenda, is not the least. For in the long run peace depends upon fellowship between the peoples of the world.

We believe that the human race is, by the Supreme Will which designed the natural order, a family. Its members differ in many respects; but they are alike in their inherent capacity to judge right and wrong and they are akin through sympathy with each other's aspirations.

The great danger of war comes from the possibility that the human

The Geneva Meeting of Foreign Ministers, October 27-November 16, 1955 (Department of State publication 6156; 1955), pp. 256–262.

family may be artificially divided into hostile camps and that certain peoples may be brought to regard others as alien and hostile, when in fact that is not the case. Sometimes those in power find it profitable to promote this alienation of peoples. But that is a danger against which we should erect such bulwarks as are to be found in the free exchange of information and in the free movement of people.

We realize that free information is not always correct information and that those who travel do not always give or receive correct impressions. Nevertheless, the risks from such infirmities are infinitely less than the risk of allowing the thinking of one people about another to be determined by government controls.

The United States hoped that one of the good results to come from the Geneva Conference of the Heads of Governments would be freer exchanges of ideas, of persons and of goods.

This has happened to some degree. The United States has tried to help in that direction.

With respect to the exchange of ideas there was nothing that the United States could do unilaterally. Already our free press reports fully on developments within the Soviet bloc that are known to it. Important statements by Soviet rulers are widely reported by our press, radio and television newscasts. The only limitation is caused by Soviet censorship of news from the Soviet Union and the difficulty which reporters experience in getting access to the facts within the Soviet bloc. On our side there is no censorship or comparable restrictions.

With respect to the exchange of persons, the United States, as an earnest of its intentions, changed its passport regulations so that passports may be obtained valid for the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries with which we have diplomatic relations, just as our passports are valid for Western European countries.

In the area of trade with the Soviet Union we have only a few prohibitions. In anticipation of this Conference, and in order to facilitate trade further, we took steps to simplify export procedures.1

However, the developments at this Conference have been disappointing.

The exchange of information and ideas is blocked on the Soviet side by an all-embracing Soviet censorship of press and radio and the systematic Soviet jamming of radio broadcasts from other countries.

In the Committee of Experts, the Soviet representative maintained that these two obstacles-censorship and jamming-could not be admitted to the agenda for substantive consideration since they concerned internal affairs of the Soviet Union.

It can be argued that these matters, are, indeed, internal ones, and it is true that only Soviet action can remove them. Nevertheless, the Soviet system of censorship, of which jamming is a part, is a basic and grave impediment to the free flow of information and ideas.

This censorship is exercised in such a way as to prevent the Soviet

1 See statement of Nov. 3, 1955, by the Secretary of Commerce; supra, doc. 32.

The Committee met from Nov. 2 to Nov. 10, 1955.

people from learning objective facts about the rest of the world. Knowledge of the true way of life of the non-communist countries, including their eagerness to live in peace and friendship with the Soviet peoples, has been suppressed. At the same time, it is impossible for the rest of the world to receive adequate reports about developments in the Soviet Union.

The failure of the Soviet Delegation to indicate any willingness to take steps looking toward the progressive elimination of censorship is, consequently, extremely discouraging.

The Soviet Delegation refused to consider Western suggestions for improvement in the treatment accorded to foreign journalists in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Delegation also evaded a precise answer to the proposal of the Western Powers for a regular exchange of uncensored broadcasts, responding only with vague pronouncements regarding the desirability of a general agreement for greater cooperation in the radio field."

We would welcome cooperation in radio communications. However, there is massive and systematic jamming of news broadcasts. Once this is eliminated, I am confident that we could reach general agreement on cooperation with regard to radio communications. This position was made clear in a note from the United States Government to the Soviet Union of December, 1953.1

On other items to which the Western Delegations attach importance-items containing concrete proposals-such as the establishment of reading rooms in the respective capitals, the publication and distribution in each other's countries of official periodicals, and the public sale of books and magazines, the Soviet Delegation also refused to express agreement even in principle. These matters were consigned by the Soviet Delegation to possible bilateral discussions at a later date.

With respect to movement of people, significant progress is blocked by the Soviet failure to respond to the Western proposals for less travel restrictions on foreigners and more normal treatment of diplomatic missions.

The Committee of Experts agreed in general on the desirability of exchanges of persons and of delegations, but even here many differences exist regarding the procedures and principles under which such exchanges should be conducted.

Exchanges of persons with the Soviet Union of necessity assume a different character than with countries of the Free World. All travel abroad by Soviet citizens is carefully controlled by the Soviet Government and is undertaken only by carefully selected groups. Travel abroad therefore on the part of Soviet citizens is not what we would call ordinary travel by persons on business or pleasure. Visits to foreign countries are an instrument of Soviet policy designed to bring certain specific advantages to the Soviet state, especially for the acquisition of technical know-how. These special features must be and are taken into consideration by the United States in its approach to this problem. It is for this reason that we seek to 1 Not printed.

establish visits of this type on a basis of reciprocal advantage. They cannot be made haphazardly or on short notice but require a certain degree of planning and arrangement.

The Experts' studies in the field of transport and trade have similarly been frustrated by the negative attitude of the Soviet Delegation. In the course of the Working Group meetings the Western Powers advanced four positive proposals:

(1) That the Soviet Union agree that bilateral negotiations looking toward the early establishment of direct air links between the Soviet Union and the Western nations, under normal bilateral air transport agreements, should be undertaken as soon as possible;

(2) That the Soviet Union take measures to alleviate the difficulties now encountered by Western businessmen in establishing adequate representation and in performing usual business and maintenance services within the Soviet Union;

(3) That the Soviet Union accord more adequate protection to Western industrial property rights and copyrights, recognizing the generally accepted right of priority to new patents and agreeing to make data available concerning Soviet patents;

(4) That the Soviet Union make available production, marketing, price and trade data, comparable to such information now available to the Soviet Union from the Western countries.

Each of these modest proposals was designed to eliminate discernible obstacles now thwarting the exercise of Western initiative for the mutually beneficial development of peaceful East-West trade. Each of these proposals was ignored or summarily dismissed by the Soviet representatives.

France, the United Kingdom and the United States made repeated requests that the Soviet Union indicate that it was now prepared itself to make the effort necessary to attain a substantially higher level of peaceful East-West trade. But the Soviet representatives made no positive response. Yet unless goods are made available from the Soviet Union and unless the Soviet Union takes concrete steps to open its market, unilateral willingness to trade on the part of the Western countries cannot convert itself into two-way trade.

In place of the positive response concerning peaceful trade which the United States had reason under the Heads of Government Directive' to expect from the Soviet Union, the Soviet representatives in the Experts' Committee confined their approach to an openly political attack upon the Western system of security controls over the exportation of a relatively small range of strategic commodities. It was precisely to avoid disputes and recriminations over these controls, and to direct attention to the vast problems of economic relationships between East and West, that the Directive from the Heads of Government speaks of "peaceful" trade.

It was precisely to avoid wasting time over such distractions from the substance of our assigninent that President Pinay, Mr. Macmillan

1 Supra, doc. 41.