Word: gromyko
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...Gromyko & Co. labored endlessly, too, to build up the prestige of their East German stooges and to label the West Germans as neo-Nazi warmongers. Although both East and West Germans had been admitted to the conference at separate tables only as "advisers," the Russians demanded that the speeches of Lothar Bolz, East Germany's pompous, vitriol-spewing Foreign Minister, be published as part of the official conference record. (Refusing, the conference secretariat noted that the question was one on which there was "permanent disagreement.") And at the week's first formal session, Gromyko, who was chairman, broke...
Stung, Christian Herter soon evened the score. Coldly noting that Gromyko "not only today but on other occasions" had accused NATO and West Germany of planning aggressive war, Herter reminded the conference that "the tensions that have required the Western powers through ordinary prudence to protect themselves" have been "tensions created -and created in many cases deliberately -by the Soviet government." Many more such Soviet charges, he warned, would mean that "our desire to negotiate seriously would be nullified very rapidly...
...Blanc by Moonlight. Even to Gromyko it was clear that all this was not going to get the conference far. "When," he asked Selwyn Lloyd, "are we going to stop all this public talking?" The answer was whenever one side or the other asked for secret sessions-an implied indication that it was ready to make concessions. But France's incisive Maurice Couve de Murville, strongly seconded by Herter, argued that since it was Russia that had instigated the conference by fomenting the Berlin crisis, it was up to the Russians to make the first move...
Seeking a way out of this impasse, the British delegation began to talk hopefully of the usefulness of "villa-hopping"'-informal "social" meetings of the Big Four foreign ministers unencumbered by their German advisers. When Herter invited Couve, Lloyd and Gromyko to dinner (fish, chicken and strawberries), the rumor spread that serious bargaining was about to begin. But guests and host sat uncommunicatively on love seats and agreed on nothing beyond the superb view of Mt. Blanc by moonlight...
Minimum price the West was prepared to accept for going on to the summit was at least provisional Russian agreement to respect the present status of West Berlin. There were signs that the Russians might be willing. Fortnight ago Gromyko, in private conversation with Herter, came close to disavowing the May 27 deadline for Western evacuation of Berlin set by Khrushchev last November. And from Moscow last week came a pointed announcement that Nikita himself planned to be away in Albania on deadline...