Khrushchev issued a new demand, calling on the Western powers to withdraw from Berlin. Ensuing talks between the West and the U.S.S.R. got nowhere. But the talks persuaded Khrushchev to shelve his Berlin ultimatum. In September 1959, he became the first Soviet leader to visit the United States, where he met with President Eisenhower.

Khruschev's hopes for a Cold War truce lasted only six months. A second Eisenhower-Khrushchev summit collapsed before it had even begun -- following the shoot-down of an American U-2 spy plane, which had been flying over Soviet airspace.
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