Uninvited Visitor

With a roll of the Soviet propaganda drums Moscow announced last week that Nikita Khrushchev will go to New York to head the Soviet delegation at the United Nations General Assembly session beginning Sept. 20. Khrushchev's second American invasion would hardly be like the first one. He was coming, not at U.S. invitation as he did last year, but visiting by right the 18 acres of U.N. territory on the East River, which is international no man's land. He could hardly hope for an American welcome or even, this time, friendly curiosity. But he seemed intent on a propaganda spectacular designed for the rest of the world.

The Communist bosses of Poland, Rumania and Czechoslovakia announced that they too would attend the U.N. session, and the remaining satellite satraps would probably follow along. Khrushchev proposed that other chiefs of government should head their U.N. delegations and work toward a disarmament agreement. Recalling the Soviet practice of timing rocket feats for propaganda purposes, the West braced itself for some Soviet space stunt on or about Sept. 20--perhaps rocketing a man aloft in a space capsule and bringing him back alive.

Frosty Calm. Nikita Khrushchev would be coming to the U.S. only four months after he had broken up the Summit, personally insulted the President, slammed the door on the President's trip to Russia, and spurred Communist agitation in Japan against Ike's visit there. He would be sitting in the U.N., dedicated to peace and world order, in his capacity as the world's No. 1 international troublemaker, and representing a system, as Secretary of State Christian Herter said in a speech to the American Bar Association last week, that is "the central obstacle to the establishment of a world of order." At the U.N., the man with the world's most powerful army, Khrushchev would be crying disarmament. He would undoubtedly be heard deploring the Congo chaos, though his goal in the Congo, as Secretary Herter also told the A.B.A., is the "collapse of order.'' Washington expected Khrushchev, just before or after his spell in the U.S., to visit the Cuba of U.S.-hating Fidel Castro, who last week told a mob he was now planning to recognize Communist China.

Washington's official reaction was a frosty calm. Apart from taking security measures to guard against any assassination attempt, said U.S. officials, the U.S. Government would not be involved with Khrushchev's visit. As a chief of government he has a right to head his country's U.N. delegation, but the U.S. would not consider him a state visitor to the U.S.. would treat him on the same terms as any other U.N. delegation chief.

Questioned Handshake. Even so, Khrushchev's impending visit raised touchy problems. President Eisenhower's tentative plans to make a farewell address to the U.N. General Assembly were now complicated by the question of whether he should proffer even so much as a handshake. If Eisenhower stayed away, would Khrushchev have clear domination of the show? In the end, the Administration announced that Herter, not Ike, would lead the U.S. delegation. That decision came as a relief to France's Charles de Gaulle, who considers the U.N. "emotional and noisy," but knows that if Ike followed Khrushchev, Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan would follow Ike, practically forcing De Gaulle to go to New York, like it or not.

Men assigned to the task would now try to conclude what Khrushchev was up to and recommend courses for counter acting his propaganda ploys (see FOREIGN NEWS). They did so not in alarm but as part of their job. Things would be livelier with Khrushchev in the U.S. Undoubtedly he might try to meddle in the U.S.'s presidential campaign. Democrat Jack Kennedy announced that he would meet with Khrushchev only if Richard Nixon went along. A spokesman for the Vice President doubted very much that Nixon or Kennedy would be invited.

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