WaybackWire

UNITED NATIONS, New York, Thursday.—Mr Khrushchev has accepted U Thant’s proposal for a pause in the Caribbean, while President Kennedy replied today that the answer to the crisis lies in removing the weapons from Cuba.

Mr Zorin read the Soviet Premier’s reply, dated today, to the Security Council. The Soviet Government, Mr Khrushchev wrote, also regards the situation as highly dangerous and calling for the immediate intervention of the United Nations. “I welcome your initiative,” he told the Acting Secretary-General. “I inform you that I am in agreement with your proposal, which is in accordance with the interests of peace.”

President Kennedy, who worked into the early hours drafting his answer, the Straits Times of Singapore reports, wrote that “the existing threat was created by the secret introduction of offensive weapons into Cuba, and the answer lies in the removal of such weapons.” He said Ambassador Stevenson is ready to discuss with U Thant arrangements for the preliminary talks he proposed. “I can assure you of our desire to reach a satisfactory and peaceful solution of the matter,” the President added.

The White House made plain that its military measures will continue, La Stampa of Turin reports.

WASHINGTON, Thursday.—The Navy today intercepted a Cuba-bound Soviet tanker and let it go on, satisfied that it carried only petroleum, and at least a dozen Soviet ships appear to have turned back, the Defense Department said.

Mr Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense, read the announcement. The encounter came shortly before 8 a.m. Washington time. Petroleum is not on the list of goods prohibited under the quarantine.

The tanker was not boarded, Associated Press informants here said. They said the Navy’s forbearance was meant to tell Mr Khrushchev that the United States is not looking for a fight.

“It now appears that at least a dozen Soviet vessels have turned back, presumably because, according to the best of our information, they might have been carrying offensive materials,” Mr Sylvester said.

About 13 Communist cargo ships are still heading for Cuba. But one Government official said tonight: “Most of the ships the Navy is interested in have turned around.”

LONDON, Thursday.—Mr Macmillan told the Commons today that the Government will support any measures which genuinely lead to the removal of the threat, and that the United Nations may for now be the better instrument.

“I feel that to achieve these objectives it may be better at the moment to use the United Nations as an instrument,” the Prime Minister said. But he warned the House that assurances alone would not do: “we cannot rest upon mere words and promises. These need, if they are to restore confidence, to be independently verified and confirmed.”

For the Opposition, Mr Hugh Gaitskell said the Prime Minister’s view would receive general support. Speaking of the unity of the alliance, he warned that “nothing would endanger that unity more completely than unilateral action by one member of the alliance”.

Mr Shinwell, Mr Selwyn Lloyd, Mr Michael Foot and Miss Jennie Lee also took part in the exchanges.

WASHINGTON.—The naval blockade “has proved an effective barrier to the introduction of more missiles” into Cuba, an Associated Press analysis from Washington argues, but it has not halted Soviet work already under way there.

Authorities, it says, are convinced that the first phase on the blockade front has passed, and that a more serious second phase is yet to come.

The analysis goes further. In its view, Mr Khrushchev may have ordered the Cuban bases as part of a plan to put President Kennedy under a surprise nuclear threat and so force concessions on Berlin.