SALT: No Time for Dancing

ONE Vienna newspaper warned that many AGENTS ARE COMING, and platoons of plainclothesmen were posted throughout the city to keep an eye on all those spooks. In a scene straight out of The Third Man, a special police team combed Vienna's labyrinthine sewers for possible bombs.

No intrigues, however, upset the opening session of the crucial strategic arms limitation talks (SALT) between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Austrian Foreign Minister Kurt Waldheim got things rolling. At the main doorway of Vienna's sumptuous Belvedere Palace, he grasped the arms of the two chief negotiators, Gerard C. Smith of the U.S. and Russia's Vladimir Semyonov, and strode into the massive red and brown Marmorsaal (marble hall). As Waldheim noted in his welcoming speech, it was in the same hall, 15 years ago, that the U.S., Britain, France and the Soviet Union signed the Austrian State Treaty, ending ten years of military occupation and launching the nation on its neutral course.

Polemical Dig. Smith read a message from President Nixon expressing his hope "for an early, equitable, verifiable agreement" on the future deployment of each superpower's strategic weapons. Semyonov declared that Russia would "welcome a reasonable accommodation," but added that the intensification of the arms race "serves the interests of aggressive imperialist circles." It was a polemical dig of the sort that the Russians had carefully avoided during the five-week preliminary SALT discussions in Helsinki.

Both sides, plainly, are taking a gingerly approach to the talks, which could prove to be the most significant negotiations of the nuclear age. Acting on Nixon's instructions, the U.S. delegation is unlikely to propose any plan nearly so bold as one contained in a recent U.S. Senate resolution, which recommends "an immediate mutual moratorium" on the deployment of strategic weapons. There were reports, however, that the President has decided to take a broader position at the talks than was originally recommended by some White House advisers. A major imponderable for U.S. policymakers is the leadership situation in the Soviet Union. If Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev is in fact in the process of consolidating his power, he will probably be inclined to move very slowly in Vienna if only to avoid offending the military men whose support he will need.

For the next few weeks, the two sides are expected to hold two 90-minute sessions a week, alternating between the U.S. and Soviet embassies. At the same time, technical experts from each delegation will probably confer more frequently. Though the Americans and Russians were welcomed with a round of receptions in the opening days, no further partying has been scheduled. Both sides have made it clear that they do not want to turn SALT into a "dancing congress"--as the Congress of Vienna was known--even in the waltz capital of the world.

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