The Soviet government rejected the Allied proposal of Dec. 31, 1958, and proposed, instead, a draft peace treaty providing for a demilitarized Germany and East German control over all access points to a free Berlin. It also recommended that 28 nations meet within two months in Prague or Warsaw, to establish a peace treaty with a neutralized but divided Germany.
Britain, France, and the United States invited Soviet participation in a Foreign Ministers Conference on the question of a German peace treaty and the ending of Berlin's occupation. The USSR accepted on March 30.
The Foreign Ministers Conference in Geneva on Berlin made no progress toward narrowing the gap between the Soviet demand for a peace treaty with both West and East Germany and the Western insistence on the reunification of Germany based on free elections.
At the end of Khrushchev's tour of the United States, U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower reported that the Soviet premier had promised not to set a deadline for the solution to the Berlin problem.
