programme of Anglo/Soviet events up to and including
January, but nothing arranged after that. If the
momentum of improvement is to be maintained, it is
desirable that there should not be a complete gap of
four months. On the other hand, for the Secretary of
State to go to Moscow within a month of the Joint
Commission's meeting might be a little too soon.
March or April would be better from this point of view,
but they are ruled out by the Secretary of State's
other engagements.
5. Other things being equal the Secretary of State
would no doubt like to time his visit to Moscow to
bring the greatest possible benefit to the talks on
Berlin. Unfortunately, the progress of these talks
cannot be foreseen.
"crunches"
-
There are likely to be too
one in September this year, when the
Four Powers reach the point of agreement on Stage I,
and the second about December when the Inner German
Talks (Stage II) reach their decisive phase. The final
protocol (Stage III) should be relatively easy and need
occupy no more than two or three weeks. The Secretary
of State's visit would therefore probably not affect the
Berlin talks unless it could be fitted in this year,
which is not possible. But we should expect the Berlin
settlement to be followed by multilateral preparations for a Conference on European Security, by which time
some kind of talks on MBFR may well also be in progress
The first few months of next year could therefore be a
period of fairly rapid movement in East-West relations,
during which a journey by the Secretary of State to
Moscow could give a very useful push to any tlks that
happen to be going on. It is not possible to say
whether the visit could most opportunately be made in /February
+3
NOTHING TO BE WRITTEN IN THIS MARGIN
1
NOTHING TO BE WRITTEN IN THIS MARGIN