News Wire Dispatch on United Press International Agency Coverage of the US-USSR negotiations

News wire dispatch from TASS on UPI coverage of the US-USSR negotiations

21 November 1962

UPI on Negotiations and Agreement between USSR and USA

ECh.IJa.RD.I8-Ju.    New York, 21 November.  Bruce Mann, correspondent with the United Press International agency, reports the following from UN headquarters:

Diplomats reported today that President Kennedy’s statement on Russia's promise to remove reactive bombers from Cuba-- and in response to this the lifting of the sea blockade by the United States-- marks the end of the military phase of the Cuban crisis.

However, they await long and difficult negotiations on the organization of what the President called sufficient checks and guarantees that ensure that all sorts of offensive weaponry have been removed from Cuba and that do not allow their appearance in our hemisphere in the future.

They consider it likely that the US representative Adlai Stevenson and Deputy Foreign Minister of the USSR Vasily Kuznetsov will continue these negotiations today, even though their meeting tomorrow has not been set...

Certain diplomats see the possibility of a rapprochement of points of view even on the issue of inspection.

They emphasize that last week the USA, on the matter of guarantees for the removal of all sorts of offensive weaponry from Cuba, had gradually transferred its insistence on "on-site inspection" to a more moderate insistence on "sufficient checks."

It has also been noted that Castro has rejected his earlier decisive statements that Cuba refuses "to allow unilateral inspections by some country or by an international organization." In his latest letter he said more gently that Cuba would not agree to unilateral inspections of our territory, through which the US government intended to resolve issues belonging entirely within our own jurisdiction as a sovereign state."

Acting UN General Secretary U Thant, who initiated the negotiations here today and who played a personal role in the crisis from 25 October on, did not receive any advance notification of the agreement with Khrushchev that the President announced.

Although U Thant communicated the statement issued on Monday night by Prime Minister of Cuba Fidel Castro concerning his agreement to the removal of about 30 Soviet "IL--28" bombers that Cuba had earlier stubbornly claimed as its own property, the question of an exchange between Kennedy and Khrushchev was not raised yesterday when the head of the UN held a business breakfast before Kennedy's press conference for the leading Soviet and American participants in the negotiations.

U Thant, who has labored with the negotiations for three and a half weeks, listened to the press conference in his office, and then privately expressed his satisfaction.

U Thant still had a role to play in the inspection issue. His statement issued last week, saying that the inspection of missile bases in Cuba by the international committee of the Red Cross has been "provisionally rescinded,” remains in effect. Informed figures have reported that the possibility still remains that the Red Cross will be forced to do this.