Berlin: Toward Meeting No. 89

There was a faint touch of detente in the Berlin air. The U.S. removed its M48 tanks from the threatening spot at West Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie, the Friedrichstrasse passageway to the Communist half of the city; next day the Russians pulled back their own tracked T-54 tanks from the sector boundary.

The surface relaxation did not mean that East and West had come any closer together on Berlin basics. It now was clear that the second conversation between U.S. Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko two weeks ago had produced...