UPI new analysis
Erhard's troubles grow
NEW YORK—(UPI)—President Johnson's recent conciliatory gesture toward Communist East Europe appears to have had two interesting and perhaps unexpected results:
- The almost instant Soviet response and a subsequent statement by Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko that both sides honestly were seeking agreement on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
- And that he may leave to future historians such as those who now delve so profitably into the mind of the late President Kennedy.
- The negative West German response which seems to forecast more trouble for Chancellor Ludwig Erhard who already has troubles enough.
Whether the results came as a surprise to the President depends upon what he may or may not have known in advance.
IN ANY EVENT, the Soviet reaction bore little resemblance to its position only a few months ago when Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin coldly let it be known that no agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States could be possible without U.S. withdrawal from South Viet Nam.
The question raised by the Germans after the presidential speech may or may not have been planted deliberately.
The natural question is why?
Every chancellory has on its payroll men whose job it is to look beneath every phrase of any world leader, no matter how innocent it may appear or however casually it may have been tossed off.
IN THIS CASE it was the President's remarks that the United States respects world frontiers.
Rightly or wrongly, the Germans seized upon the phrase to speculate that it signaled a change of U.S. attitude toward the Oder-Neisse line born of the Potsdam conference and surrendering the former German provinces of Pomerania and Silesia to Poland pending a final settlement of World War II.
Up until now, the United States has supported the German view that no final line existed until agreed upon in a final peace conference. And no such peace conference ever has been held.
of U.S. troop maintenance in Germany.
For Erhard, a turn in U.S. policy toward the Oder-Neisse could mean real trouble.
The presidential phrase could have been a meaningless one, so far as the Oder-Neisse is concerned. But it also, as the Germans suspected, might have held a hidden threat that unless the Germans met certain U.S. conditions, the U.S. could change its mind.
The Erhard regime is at odds with French President De Gaulle, and was unsuccessful in its efforts to cut back on its promise of arms purchases in the United States in exchange for the cost
Daily Kansan Wednesday, October 12, 196
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