Facing the Russians

It's more chess than poker, say SALT insiders

When U.S. Ambassador Ralph Earle met the Soviets' Vladimir Semyonov at the SALT meeting in Geneva one sunny morning last week, they did not shake hands at the door. It was not because there was any bad feeling between them but because Semyonov, a deputy foreign minister of the Soviet Union, subscribes to an old Russian superstition that it is bad luck to shake hands on a threshold. That is one of the many small oddities of negotiating with the Russians. Although the world's attention is periodically focused on highly publicized encounters between Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance and Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko--the next one is expected to take place in New York City in September--the real labor of negotiating an arms-control agreement with the Soviet Union takes place at largely secret meetings in Geneva. There, TIME Diplomatic Correspondent, Strobe Talbott had a rare opportunity to observe the permanent SALT delegations at work. His report: For nearly six years, U.S. and Soviet negotiators have been haggling over what is potentially one of the most important pieces of paper in the world. It is also one of the most complicated. The typescript of the Joint Draft Text for a SALT II agreement runs 61 pages--ten times as long as the SALT I agreement Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev signed in 1972. Every page is stamped SECRET, and almost every sentence is the result of months, in some cases years, of bargaining.

Scattered throughout the agreed-upon text are pairs of alternately worded passages in brackets. These are the provisions and definitions still in dispute. In the English version, the U.S.-proposed wording comes first and is numbered 1, followed by the Soviet proposal, numbered 2; the Russian version has it the other way around. The brackets sometimes embrace a single word or number, sometimes a lengthy paragraph, sometimes a semantic fine point, sometimes a major issue on which ratification itself could depend. Slowly and cautiously, following detailed orders from their respective capitals, the negotiators are chipping away at the brackets that prevent the draft from being a finished treaty.

The U.S.'s chief SALT negotiator is Paul Warnke, 58, but he also serves as the director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in Washington and is directly responsible for three other sets of negotiations. The result is that he has been able to attend only about 25% of the SALT sessions in Geneva. In Warnke's absence, the U.S. "working level" negotiators are led by Ambassador Earle, 49, a lawyer and former Pentagon official who has been a full-time member of the SALT delegation for five years. His current job, says Earle, "is a little bit like being a trial lawyer, except it means going to trial constantly, a number of times every week. We used to be told in law school that you had to prepare four to eight hours for every hour in court. It's the same here. The only difference is, here there's no judge."

Instead, there is just the lawyer for the other side. Semyonov, 67, a nearly bald veteran of 39 years in the Soviet diplomatic service, has been the chief of his delegation since the beginning of SALT in 1969. Among Americans who have dealt with him over the years, Semyonov has the reputation of being a stubborn bargainer who, if necessary, can talk any adversary under the table. He also seems to be the uncontested commissar of his own colleagues in Geneva. "We have a democratic delegation," he once remarked. Paraphrasing the famous ending of George Orwell's Animal Farm, he added: "We are all equal. But I am more equal."

Earle and Semyonov get together weekly with only their interpreters present. They alternate between the local Soviet diplomatic mission and U.S. SALT headquarters, a nondescript modern office building originally built to house Playboy Financier Bernie Cornfeld's Investors Overseas Services before his empire collapsed in 1970. Even though Earle and Semyonov have known each other for five years, their relationship is strictly business. They address each other as "Mr. Ambassador" and "Mr. Minister," and Semyonov often speaks from notes or even prepared texts.

These one-on-one meetings are often the most intensive encounters of the week. For two to four hours, Earle and Semyonov trade previews of proposals to be tabled at more formal sessions a few days later, and sometimes they pick up signals of new flexibility in each others' positions--or of new troubles ahead.

Most weeks there are one or two "plenaries," meetings of the full delegations with about a dozen participants on each side. Once again the Soviets and Americans take turns playing host. While an armed Marine guard and remote control TV monitors keep watch on the roof at U.S. headquarters, the delegations exchange speeches. As a matter of custom, the visitors lead off and the home team responds.

The U.S. statement is drafted in Geneva but based on extensive guidance from the White House. "Basic instructions," those containing a new proposal, for example, are approved by the President himself; "amplifying instructions" are cleared by National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. The Soviet statement is translated into English by the U.S. delegation's team of five resident interpreters and flashed back to Washington over the State Department's own coded communications network.

The "plenary" session usually lasts no longer than 45 minutes. The delegations then break up into smaller, "postplenary" working groups over coffee, tea, juice, cookies and peanuts. (Warnke's predecessor, U. Alexis Johnson, instituted a dry rule in 1973, fearing that one drink too many during a postplenary might lead to an inadvertent breakthrough--or breakdown.)

American delegates huddle with their Soviet opposite numbers to explore possibilities for compromise. Lieut. General Edward Rowny, who represents the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sits down in one corner with General Ivan Beletsky of the Soviet Defense Ministry, while Pentagon Scientist Gerald Johnson debates the esoterica of multiple warheads or cruise missiles with Electronics Expert Alexander Shchukin, 78, an urbane old Bolshevik who joined the Red Army the year of the Russian Revolution. Shchukin occasionally asks Warnke or Earle, in fluent French, to send his regards to two former U.S. SALT negotiators who used to be his interlocutors in Geneva post-plenaries--Paul Nitze, now a leading opponent of the prospective SALT II treaty, and Harold Brown, now Secretary of Defense.

Another sophisticated member of the Soviet team is Vladimir Pavlichenko, who has a command of idiomatic American English, a caustic sense of humor and an impressive understanding of U.S. domestic politics. He is identified on the delegation list as representing "the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences." Actually, he was exposed by the New York Times in 1971 as a Veteran Official of the KGB.

Between working sessions, the delegations mix in a variety of more relaxed settings--over lunch, dinner or cocktails, since the dry rule applies only to the post-plenaries. The Americans tend to drink vodka, and the Russians prefer bourbon. But even these more informal contacts are governed by strict rules: neither side, for example, ever mentions Jimmy Carter's human rights campaign. Nor are such contacts truly private. The U.S. negotiators prepare memorandums known as "memcons" on any "unofficial" point--or hint--of substance a Russian offers, and the Soviet side presumably does the same.

The U.S. team is frequently augmented by visiting Congressmen and Senators, who are designated "advisors" to the American delegation and allowed to sit in on meetings. "We have sustained an invasion of your legislators," said one Russian negotiator, "and, as you know, we do not believe in invasions." But the Soviets limit their objections to occasional wisecracks, since they understand the Carter Administration's desire to enlist congressional support for the treaty. Asked why there are no similar visitations to Geneva by members of the Supreme Soviet, the U.S.S.R.'s rubber-stamp parliament, the Russian remarked sarcastically: "Perhaps our Supreme Soviet has more confidence in us than your Congress has in your delegation."

Earle sums up the experience of negotiating with the Russians: "It's frequently tedious and frustrating. The importance of the exercise is its reward. It goes slowly partly because the chips are so large--although I find it's more like chess than poker because of the complex interrelationship of the issues. Obviously we're negotiating on different sides of the table from the Soviets, but we're in a common endeavor. It's not a race which one will win and the other will lose. It's more like two climbers trying to get to the summit at the same time."

After 15 months of non-stop talk--since the beginning of the Carter Administration--with only two weeks off for Christmas, both delegations in Geneva are ready for an August break. But each is reluctant to propose one. The Soviets, as a matter of negotiating tactics, never want to suggest that they are wearying, and the Americans do not want to encourage speculation that SALT is being "suspended" in retaliation for the recent Moscow trials of dissidents. Asked about the possibility of a brief and much needed vacation, Soviet Negotiator Pavlichenko looked wide-eyed in mock astonishment and asked "What? A recess? When there is still unfinished business?"

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