Word: gromyko
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...single afternoon's work last week Russia's pedestrian Andrei Gromyko swept away nearly seven months of diplomatic maneuvering over Berlin and nakedly exposed the Geneva conference as an exercise in futility...
Last week, in a long-awaited "counter-proposal," Gromyko made it clear that Russia had no interest in such a bargain. Instead, he brazenly announced that Moscow would "grant" the Western powers one more year of occupation rights in Berlin-provided they would reduce their forces in West Berlin to "symbolic" levels (about 50 from each nation), would liquidate all anti-Communist propaganda and espionage organizations in the city, and would agree, when the year was up, to accept an all-German committee (equal membership on both sides) to talk about "reunification." In a final burst of arrogance, Gromyko added...
...Forget. "This is an ultimatum." retorted Britain's Selwyn Lloyd-and, in fact, Gromyko's terms amounted to little more than a revival of the original "Get-out-of-Berlin" ultimatum that Khrushchev served on the West last November, to be effective after six months (May 27). U.S. Secretary of State Christian Herter, in his outrage, made a solitary trip to Gromyko's villa to warn the Russian Foreign Minister that "the early days of next week will determine the outcome of the conference." Deliberately, Herter let slip the fact that his plane was on stand...
...within three days of Gromyko's bombshell, the West's first toughness began to erode. At a plenary conference session, Britain's Lloyd, in a boys-will-be-boys tone, suggested that everybody just forget "Mr. Gromyko's contribution of Tuesday and Wednesday . . . and get back to real business." Herter, in firmer vein, prodded Gromyko into publicly stating that he had not meant his "proposal" as an ultimatum. As Herter well knew, however, this did not imply an iota of change in Gromyko's stand. And as if to make that clear, the Soviet Foreign...
...counter to all this, Andrei Gromyko, who has shown a tireless talent for saying the same thing in the same way, offered some apparent concessions of his own. The West, he conceded, does have the victor's right to maintain occupation forces in Berlin, and the Soviet price for a Berlin settlement no longer requires Western recognition of Communist East Germany. Then came the old stall: Russia would not discuss the question of access until the Western powers agreed that Berlin become a "free city," i.e., until they renounced their occupation rights. And there matters stopped-approximately where they...