Proceedings of the Summit Conference 457



of this afternoon1 corresponded very largely to the statements made by
Khrushchev and the President at the meeting this morning.
    Mr. Kohler confirmed that no definite departure time had yet been
set for the President. There was a general feeling on the Western side
that there should be a NATO meeting with all three Foreign Ministers
present. Probably the best time for this would be Wednesday morning.
[3-1/2 lines of source text not declassified] While there was some specula-
tion in the American Delegation as to what the Soviets might do next,
such as moving on Germany, there was no conclusive evidence pointing
one way or the other. Ambassador Grewe noted that the Soviet Press
Officer, in answer to an inquiry this afternoon, had said that it was not
certain that the status quo on Germany and Berlin would be preserved
during the period of 6 to 8 months which the Soviets had said should
elapse before another Summit meeting.
    In response to Ambassador Grewe's question as to American think-
ing about Soviet motivation, Mr. Kohler said there was no question but
that Khrushchev's basic statement had been written in Moscow. It was
still not possible to arrive at any definite conclusions, but there was a
general feeling that the Soviets had begun to realize that they were not
going to get anything on Germany and Berlin. The recent speeches by
the Secretary and Under Secretary Dillon,2 as well as reports about
Western firmness and unity as manifested in the Four-Power Working
Group and elsewhere, had presumably confirmed this impression.
There was also no doubt that the Soviets were very annoyed by the
penetration of their territory made by our plane. This had apparently
strengthened elements in the Soviet Union which opposed what they re-
garded as Khrushchev's soft policy. The Soviets might also have
thought that the incident provided a good opportunity for dividing the
Allied front. The West now had to drop its Summit preparations and
work harder on contingency planning, Mr. Kohler noted. Ambassador
Grewe said that his theory was that the Soviets were trying to change the
sequence of events. Now the peace treaty would come first, then the cri-
sis, and finally the Summit meeting during the climax of the American
electoral campaign. He felt that the two urgent problems for the West
now were how to react to Soviet signature of a peace treaty with the
GDR and how to strengthen contingency planning.



    1 For text of the President's statement released after the meeting, see
American For-
eign Policy: Current Documents, 1960, pp. 429-430; for text of Khrushchev's
statement at the
meeting which was released to the press by the Soviet delegation during the
afternoon on
May 16, see Document 168.
    2 For text of Herter's address to the National Association of Broadcasters
on April 4,
see Department of State Bulletin, April 25,1960, pp. 635-640; regarding Dillon's
speech on
April 20, see Document 130.