July 23, 1962 - President Kennedy made a gloomy report at his news conference today on the prospect of a Berlin settlement. The President said that Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko had moved no closer to an accord in their talks at Geneva last weekend. For much of this year, the Berlin issue was relatively quiet as the two nations kept their differences within diplomatic channels. Two weeks ago, however, the Soviet Union reverted to a harsher tone and threatened once again to sign a peace treaty with East Germany unless the Western powers agreed to withdraw their forces from West Berlin. Last Tuesday, President Kennedy met with Ambassador Anatoly F. Dobrynin to remind him that the withdrawal of Western troops was not a negotiable issue in the Berlin dispute.
