New Berlin Crisis Expected Soon

Press, Volume C, Issue 29510, 11 May 1961, Page 15

New Berlin Crisis Expected Soon

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

OSLO, May 10.

Britain, the United States and France believe Russia will provoke a fresh crisis over Berlin within a few months, it was disclosed at the N.A.T.O. ministerial conference yesterday. They believe this is implicit in recent Soviet statements that a peace treaty must soon be signed with East Germany, under which Western rights of access to Berlin would lapse.

A spokesman said delegates attending the conference had been discussing yesterday how to react if such a crisis was provoked. United States officials deny that there has been any change in the American approach to Berlin, but officials from other delegations maintain there is a change.

Some regard Washington as now ruling out the possibility of an interim agreement on Berlin with the Russians, although such an agreement was under negotiation at the Geneva Foreign Ministers’ conference of 1959. Differing interpretations have also been given about the dinner talks which the Foreign Ministers of the United States, Britain. France, and West Germany had on Berlin last night. Beforehand, officials said it was hoped to complete the letter which the West German Chancellor (Dr. Adenauer) is sending to Mr Khrushchev in reply to a long memorandum on Germany and Berlin of last February.

It was stated yesterday that the four Powers had more or less agreed on the broad lines of the reply, but that Dr. Adenauer would not be sending it yet. American sources maintained that it was never the intention of the Foreign Ministers to complete the reply, and that this work was being done in Washington. Various pieces of information of this kind from different delegations suggest that the Kennedy Administration has not yet thrashed out al! details of a German policy with its Western European allies. Officials said Britain would regard any Soviet-East Germany peace treaty as a very grave development. "We would react strongly against it. and would not recognise that any treaty would affect our position in Berlin in any way.” an official said.

Juridically, Britain would not accept it, but in prac-

tice, it would be necessary to see how it worked out “If the Russians offered to negotiate, we would have to see what they had in mind,” he said.

A N.A.T.O. spokesman said last night that the Ministerial Council had decided to send a three-man mission to Greece and Turkey to examine what economic a>.d these underdeveloped countries needed. The main task of the mission would be to determine the extent of the aid required The United States yesterday offered to commit to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation area five submarines equipped with Polaris medium-range missiles, an authoritative source said. The source said the offer, made by the Secretary of State (Mr Dean Rusk) to the N.A.T.O. Foreign Ministers' conference, was for the sub-

marines to remain under American control. It would not provide N.A.T.O. with an independent nuclear force. Mr Rusk was said to have made these points in a short speech on defence at the end of this afternoon’s council session:

The United States intended to maintain its own forces and supporting units in Europe.

The United States intended to maintain in the European area an effective nuclear capacity for the use of its own and other N.A.T.O. forces.

The United States believed N.A.T.O. must increase the strength of its conventional forces to permit flexibility of response. To meet the needs of the alliance, the United States would commit Polaris submarines to “the N.A.T.O areas”

Conference observers said Mr Rusk had put tn formal terms to the N.A.T.O. conference the defence thinking of the new Kennedy administration. He emphasised the need for N.A.T.O. to strengthen its conventional forces

Washington’s new thinking is that more stress must be put on Western Europe’s capacity to resist and absorb an attack with conventional forces, so that the Western nuclear weapons do not have to be used at such an early stage in hostilities.