spections inside the Soviet Union. We did not go down that road, because we didn't think that it would really make any difference to the Soviet Union, nor to the neutrals, and might in fact wind up with a position which we ourselves could not in good conscience accept. We felt that it would be very important for us not to make proposals in the disarmament field purely for propaganda purposes, but make only those that we would be prepared to sign and which we could honestly recommend for ratification.

I don't really think that combinations of that sort would make any further difference to the Soviet Union. We have a good basic position on which to stand, and the compromises we have already made over the past several months fully meet our position.

I do think we made considerable headway in removing this argument of espionage. We did have an exchange. I opened the meeting one morning with a pretty full discussion of this point. Gromyko then spoke, and Lord Home came back in rebuttal. I think we were able to make it pretty clear that any charge that this kind of inspection we were talking about regarding nuclear testing had anything to do with espionage was pretty flimsy, and there were moments when the conference was in fact laughing at Mr. Gromyko on some of the positions that Lord Home was able to defend with on this matter.

GENERAL DISARMAMENT

Now, in the field of general disarmament, that discussion proceeded at a much more leisurely pace. The Soviets tabled what they called a draft treaty for general and complete disarmament. We had tabled a plan that was put to the United Nations last September, and will be following through with particular documents on special aspects of it in the next several weeks. But again, the problem comes back to the same point of international inspection and verification.

Gromyko continued to insist that the only thing that they would permit to be inspected would be disarmament-that is, in effect, the inspection of the bonfire so-called-that there could not be international inspection of retained arms or armed forces. The problem in the nuclear test field, as far as inspection is concerned, would be multiplied many times over in the general disarmament field, because the inspection for general disarmament would have to be much more intrusive and persuasive than the limited and highly technical kind of establishment we were talking about in the nuclear testing.

This repeated attitude of theirs on inspection, I think, lost them considerable ground in the conference. I think we will be able to move on that pretty hard.

The Brazilians and Mexicans and others insisted on the intimate relation between inspection and disarmament. I think there was a general acceptance outside of the bloc of the view that secrecy and disarmament are basically incompatible, and that disarmament proposals that do not permit inspection, except of those arms that are being destroyed, are not really serious.

COLLATERAL MEASURES

I do think, however, it is possible that we shall be able to get agreement on some of what have come to be called collateral measures at Geneva. There is perhaps some agreement with regard to the placing of weapons of mass destruction in orbit, the possibility of some measures against surprise attack, the possibility of an agreement on the non-diffusion of nuclear weapons to countries not now possessing them. Although on that last point we again are going to run into a very substantial problem.

We are, and have been for a long time, opposed to the addition of other national nuclear capabilities. We have not been willing to assist other governments in developing a national nuclear weapons capability. The Soviet Union will press that point very hard and try to include in it anything in the nature of a NATO nuclear deterrent. They say that this is not only right from the point of view of a national nuclear capability, but we should prohibit any attempt to do it indirectly through third parties or through association of powers. Now, this will give us a good deal of trouble, because one of the means by which we may head off pressures in Germany for the development of a national capability there would be to work out some alliance-wide arrangement whereby a NATO nuclear deterrent might take the place of additional national capabilities. And the Soviets, I think, will be very alive to that, and we will have a major problem with them.

I think the pace of the general disarmament discussions will be rather slow, and it may take some time to come to grips with the central questions. But the main question will undoubtedly be that problem of verification, and I am not at all pessimistic about getting wide international understanding of the necessity for verification of some sort, some adequate sort, during the process of disarmament.

DISCUSSIONS ON BERLIN

On Berlin-and I think Berlin was by all odds the most interesting aspect of the discussions-I had five sessions with Gromyko, bilateral. Our experts had four additional sessions on the same subject.

At the beginning Gromyko arrived in town with an expression to the effect that although they were not particularly interested in discussing Berlin, I indicated before I left this might be a matter that might come up, so they were ready to hear what I would say. But he had his entire Berlin expert staff with him, everybody in the Foreign Office who had been working on it all the time, had them with him from the very beginning.

The first three meetings we had on Berlin were more or less on Western initiative. Lord Home and I had him for a tripartite meeting and I scheduled a lunch-that was on a Sunday-scheduled him for a lunch on a Tuesday. He came back and invited me to lunch on the Monday preceding. But those three meetings were, in effect, on our initiative.

It was interesting that the last four meetings we had on Berlin, including the expert meetings as well as my own talks with Gromyko, were on their initiative. I think that this is, in effect, the princi

pal thing that happened during the conference, because we found that we were going over the same ground, making the same records. We talked about every possible aspect of it. We talked about all the so-called side issues, the border questions. We reviewed everything that had been said from Vienna right down to the present time, and in effect we got nowhere on the essential substance of the question. We tried therefore to organize the discussion on the American side in three categories.

DRAWING A LINE UNDER WORLD WAR II

They had kept talking about drawing a line under World War II. They said it was important to wind up the situation in Berlin and draw a line under World War II. So we said, "All right, if you want to talk about how you change the situation, we will talk with you about that; we will talk about how you really end World War II. Our views on that have to do with a unified Germany based on the free choice of the German peoples with Berlin as its capital. We will put that alongside your proposals for a free city of Berlin, and talk to you about that on the basis that we each discuss our views about the desirable changes."

They then said, "Of course, we will, but that doesn't represent the factual situation." So we said, "All right, we will talk to you about the factual situation. You say that the facts are that there are two Germanys. We say that there is a third fact that you have consistently overlooked, and that is there is West Berlin and the Western position in West Berlin, with the Western access to Berlin. So we will talk to you about the factual situation, see if we can find a basis in which we can settle this question on the basis of the facts as they exist." Well, they came back and said, "But we want to change the situation in West Berlin." I went back to the first category, "If you want to change, let's talk about change. If you want to talk about facts, let's talk about facts." We got nowhere with that.

Then we asked the Russians to take it up from this point of view. "We are in basic disagreement with Germany and Berlin. We see no present prospect that we are going to get agreement. We have told you that our vital interests are involved in your proposals. You have told us that you are not going to be able to withdraw your proposals. All right, that creates a serious and apparently insuperable disagreement.

"Then perhaps we ought to talk about how we handle this disagreement; how, in fact, you deal with the situation in which you are in basic disagreement, without a resort to a major crisis."

A MODUS VIVENDI

So we made certain proposals to them, along the lines of a modus vivendi. We picked out certain general points, such as the freedom and viability of West Berlin, free access to it; such as the non-diffusion of nuclear weapons; such as the possibilities of a non-aggression discussion or pact, even between the NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries; such as the nonuse of force for changing the status quo in Central Europe: Things which both sides have been saying for years.

We said, "Now perhaps about all we can do is to register that we have agreed on certain general principles and then set up some machinery, such as a foreign ministers' deputies machinery of the sort that negotiated the Austrian settlement, and let them discuss this situation further-indefinitely, if need be. That wouldn't require you to withdraw your proposals; that wouldn't affect the vital interests of the West in West Berlin. But our problem is how we move to keep this situation from getting out of hand if we can't agree with each other." They pretended not to be interested in that approach, but they sent it immediately back to Moscow. It was at that point that they began to be interested in, or seemed to be interested in, continuing the conversations, because when we described this possibility of a modus vivendi, we decided that we would just wait and see what their reactions were. After about 40 hours, without anything happening, they then took the initiatives which led to the last four meetings for further discussion of Berlin. They have not accepted the notion of a modus vivendi. They continue to press for their proposals and express the hope that we can agree to their proposals.

NO INCLINATION OF MOVE TOWARD CRISIS

On the other side, there are two points that I think were quite marked in the discussions. If I mention them, I have to add the caution that both these points could be changed and disappear overnight.

The one is that they showed no inclination to move this problem down the road toward a crisis. I did take occasion to press them pretty hard on this point, because we felt that we ought to try to find out a little more about whether we are headed for a clutch or whether we are headed toward a possible agreement. So I probed pretty hard on this, in terms of their readiness to engage the vital interests of the West with all the consequences that might flow from it, and they didn't pick it up. They moved away from that. It was quite clear that they did not want to leave the impression that they were getting ready for a crisis or thought that this would move in that direction. There were none of the threats of last summer, there was none of the talk of war, there were no military pressures of that sort injected into the situation from their side.

Second, they seemed very reluctant to record any diplomatic impasse. That is, when we would get to a point where we would be tempted to say, "Well, then, apparently we have two non-negotiable problems here in front of us, two non-negotiable positions," their side would say, "Well, this ought to be discussed further at the ministerial level."

It was Gromyko who took the initiative at the end to tell the press, as we were breaking up from our last meeting, that our conversations would continue. And our small joint statement that we put out at the end, that referred to further talks after consultation with governments and allies, that joint statement went to Moscow and was cleared back there, before Gromyko would agree to issue it in Geneva.

When we check it against intelligence information as well, I do come back with the impression that they do not want this question

to move to an early military crisis. They do not wish to confess a diplomatic impasse. They want to talk about it further. In the next 10 days or 2 weeks we will be in touch with them again about where we go next in discussing this Berlin question.

That isn't very much to bring home. Certainly it is about the thinnest slice of bacon that one could manage in terms of 2 weeks of negotiation, but marginally I would say that the sense of immediate crisis over Berlin has been somewhat relieved, unless they were kidding us and they change their minds overnight, without notice. Of course, that can always happen.

I do think it is confirmed that it does help for us to show that we are prepared to be just as patient, just as reiterative, and just as persistent as they are about repeating our positions, the essential elements of our positions. We are under some pressure to keep coming up with new positions, without anything new from the Soviet side. But we kept at it. I think perhaps our job is to stay with it.

We did not talk about summitry at Geneva. Gromyko did not bring it up. I think on that subject the situation is about where it was before I went over, and about where it was when the President wrote Khrushchev on that subject some 3 weeks ago, almost a month ago now.

Mr. Chairman, I just make these first remarks as a basis for inviting any questions or comments the members of the committee might have.

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to ask one or two questions.

REASONS FOR THE ABSENCE OF SOVIET THREATS

Do you attribute this reluctance to come to showdown, in the absence of threats and so on, to their relations with the Chinese, or to what do you attribute this thin slice of bacon that you did bring home?

Secretary RUSK. I think there are several possibilities. One real possibility, Mr. Chairman, might well be that they decided several months ago that they must undertake a crash program of rearmament in certain aspects of their military machine, and that they might want to hold this question off until then. That is the more negative possibility, but we have some intelligence indications that could point in that direction, particularly in the missile field, where they are making now, we think, a major crash effort.

The other is the problem of China. It would be hard to judge exactly in which direction that would push the Soviets on this particular issue. If their relations with Peiping are fundamentally in difficulty-that is, if there is a prospect of a real split-then they would be cautious about Berlin. But if this is anything like the framework of a family quarrel, they would be tempted, I think, to pursue a more aggressive policy to demonstrate to the Chinese that their brand of tactics produced results, as per their promise to Peiping.

It may be, Mr. Chairman, that they simply have not finally decided. I think they may be just still puzzled about how far they should press it, because they have heard pretty insistently now for quite a long time that the West will not be pushed out of West