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Tito: "Do you have a concert?" K.: "Little groups of loudmouths come around the embassy, mostly the same ones, over and over. They pay them wages for doing it. One of our embassy employees went out and mingled with the group. Along came a man and handed him a placard and $8 to hold it. That is moral decline, degeneracy." Tito: "We have the bloodiest of the chetniks to contend with: assassins, people who fought with the Germans against us. They're all here." K.: "All the garbage washed up on these shores, wave upon wave." Then the two marched into the main hall.
Renewed Call. As Ike appeared on the rostrum, all but the Communist-bloc leaders broke into respectful applause. Khrushchev turned on his most impassive face, fiddled with his earpiece, exchanged comments with Gromyko, gazed at his gold-banded watch, drummed his fingers now and then on his desk. Castro leaned for ward intently.
With firmness and force, the President unfolded a state paper that had few precedents in U.N. or U.S. history. He blasted those countries (i.e., the Soviets and satellites) that would undermine the U.N. for their own ends, renewed his call for disarmament talks, detailed an elaborate program to aid Africa, proposed a plan to safeguard outer space against military use, sounded again and again the U.S. support of Hammarskjold and U.N. policies in Africa (see box). When he finished, most delegates again warmly applauded him, while the Communists sat on their hands.
Lunch & Ice. They got off their hands for Marshal Tito, whose rambling speech, carefully trod the narrow Titoist line that espoused support of Khrushchev-style disarmament and policies, while reserving for himself a role of conciliator between East and West.
Later, Tito darted across town to the Waldorf to see Ike, who had just finished lunching with delegates of all Latin American nations (not invited: Cuba, the Dominican Republic). Ike had also had a quick exchange of pleasantries with Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah, Nepal's Premier B. P. Koirala and Lebanon's Premier Saeb Salam. Tito and Ike broke the ice with a discussion of cattle breeding, parted on Ike's invitation to Tito to travel freely in the U.S. during his stay.
Boos at the Plaza. Then everybody got set for Nikita Khrushchev's rebuttal next day. By now it was clear that no mere recital of the oft-told Soviet line would be enough to recapture all the lost ground. Khrushchev's own description of Ike's speech as "conciliatory" suggested that Khrushchev was eager to begin negotiating again. That night, instead of closeting himself with his advisers, Khrushchev resumed his favorite role of informal comic and propagandist. Flanked by his ever-present army of security guards, he rolled up to the staid Plaza Hotel to attend a Togolese reception. As he stepped from his limousine, hundreds of New Yorkers greeted him with the wildest chorus of boos and catcalls that he had got all week. Smiling, he waved at them and darted into the lobby, where again a mob of onlookers, including a heavy sprinkling of resident dowagers, joined in the heckling. At the elevator Khrushchev turned toward the grim-faced elderly ladies, uttered one Milton Berlesque "Boo!" and stepped aboard.