Word: gromyko
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...desk in the U.S. embassy on Tchaikovsky Street in Moscow one afternoon last week, Ambassador Llewellyn E. Thompson Jr. got a telephone message from Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Would 6 o'clock that evening be all right for the first preliminary talks about a summit meeting? It was. Thompson put on his coat and Homburg, got into his Cadillac, went off to confer with Gromyko. Time of conference: 35 minutes. Next day Britain's Ambassador Sir Patrick Reilly heard the telephone's ring, also got 35 minutes with Gromyko. France's Ambassador Maurice Dejean...
...purpose of these talks is to bring our views closer," said Gromyko, adding not one word of explanation for calling in the Western powers separately instead of together, as previously understood, or for kicking off good-will parleys by trying to split up the allies. "This does not constitute a start of the negotiations," said Ambassador Thompson, but he was too diplomatic to complain...
...Growing Madness." Next day Gromyko called in not the Western ambassadors but the world press, and before its representatives he dropped a propaganda bombshell. Gromyko charged the U.S. with sending Strategic Air Command jet bombers, loaded with nuclear bombs, "across the Arctic areas in the direction of the borders of the Soviet Union." He announced that the U.S.S.R. was submitting the charge to the U.N. Security Council as "a dangerous provocation against peace." Basis for complaint: a lurid, you-are-there style of report by United Press President Frank Bartholomew about how SAC's bombers had been launched...
When the down-with-SAC outcry got back to Washington, the official spokesmen chorused cold denials. Said Presidential Press Secretary James Hagerty: "Mr. Gromyko's statements are not true." Said the State Department in a formal statement: "It is categorically denied that the U.S. Air Force is conducting provocative nights." Said the spokesman for the U.S. delegation to the U.N.: "We have always been willing to discuss any charges made against us. Witness the fantastic accusations directed at us-potato bugs, germ warfare and others-all proved to be absurd and untrue...
Washington particularly feared a Russian success in the nations of Asia and Africa that sit out the cold war and wish that nobody had any nuclear weapons. And many an Asian raised an expected cheer at Gromyko's announcement. Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, 79-year-old ex-Governor General of India, called the Soviet test suspension "God's Russian miracle-let us hope this noble gesture is contagious." In Burma the New Times hailed it as "a clear moral victory over...