Merciful End to a Marathon

By George Russell

After 32 months, East and West come close to an accord

The conclave may go down in history as one of the longest, most arduous diplomatic marathons of the postwar period. Even so, delegates from 33 European countries, the U.S. and Canada were full of optimism last week: an end to their mission seemed to be in sight. U.S. Envoy Max Kampelman helped set the tone as he returned to Madrid's sprawling concrete Palace of Congresses after consultations with Administration officials in Washington. Kampelman predicted international approval of a 35-page draft document that summed up, after 32 months of often desultory negotiation, the compromises reached at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Within 24 hours, President Reagan himself announced U.S. backing for the agreement. Said he: "We will sign it with the hope that it will serve as a step toward ... a more stable and constructive relationship with the Soviet Union."

The occasion marked an improvement, albeit a small one, in the otherwise sorry state of East-West relations. The diplomatic assembly in Madrid was on the verge of concluding its second review of the historic 1975 Helsinki Final Act, the agreement that codified the framework of detente. But despite Kampelman's auspicious words, the Madrid exercise was not quite over. The agreement must be accepted by representatives of all 35 conference participants. The last obstacle to complete accord was the island republic of Malta, which insisted that all 35 conference members accept the idea of a future meeting on Mediterranean security. Even when that hurdle is cleared, the Madrid agreements must be endorsed by the foreign ministers of all the participants. That ritual, which may not take place until September, may provide the opportunity for a meeting between Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko.

The diplomatic agreement had as much to do with image as with substance. With superpower relations at their lowest ebb in more than a decade, it was no mean achievement to produce even a modest declaration of concert in Madrid. Said a U.S. delegate: "I see it as a sign that things won't necessarily deteriorate further, and could even get better."

The document in question consists mainly of a series of commitments to hold, over the next three years, further international meetings aimed at addressing such issues as disarmament, international security and human rights. The Madrid draft agreement also includes the broad declarations of respect for human rights provisions that buttress the Helsinki Final Act. Among the values mentioned: freedom of religion, the right to form free trade unions, and "the freer and wider dissemination of printed matter"--a euphemistic reference to freedom of the press. Said President Reagan of the document: "Together with the Helsinki accords, this agreement sets forth a clear code of conduct."

The prolonged Madrid meeting, which was initially slated to last no more than two or three months, fell victim to the deterioration of detente. The original Helsinki agreement was hailed as a diplomatic landmark. In essence, it traded de facto Western recognition of post-World War II boundaries in Europe for a host of cooperative understandings, and for Moscow's broad endorsement of a number of human rights concerns. Yet many Western diplomats now describe the Helsinki agreement as "a mess." Despite the restrictions contained in the accords, notably clauses respecting national sovereignty and rejecting interference in the affairs of sovereign states, the Soviet Union has invaded Afghanistan and encouraged Polish authorities to impose martial law. Moscow has continued the energetic repression of its own dissidents, most of whom were inspired by the very declarations that Moscow endorsed in Helsinki.

The slow pace of the Madrid talks has provided a fairly accurate reflection of the frosty state of relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union over the past three years. The conference began in a chill, eleven months after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. As the deadline for beginning the meeting approached, the participants could not even agree on an agenda for their gathering. They arbitrarily stopped the conference clock at five minutes before midnight in order to continue thrashing out their differences.

Since then the Madrid meeting has followed a decidedly rambling course. When the delegates found points of agreement, they held plenary sessions several times a week; when they did not, they met only to adjourn. Deliberations were limited by the fact that the conference operated by consensus. The objections of any one country were often enough to stall negotiations. Last year the Madrid conference held no sessions between February and November because of Western concern over the imposition of martial law in Poland. As a senior U.S. diplomat put it, "It's the only kind of international court we have in which to drag the Soviets into the docket on human rights."

For the meeting's Spanish hosts, the obstructionist tactics eventually posed a logistical crisis. The building in which the conference was being held had been booked to accommodate journalists attending last summer's soccer World Cup. Thanks primarily to the East-West dispute over Poland's imposition of martial law, the conference site was left vacant all summer for the use of soccer fans.

In March a group of eight "neutral and nonaligned" West European countries at the conference challenged the meeting to come to a compromise agreement or else dissolve. (The eight: Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Sweden, Switzerland and Yugoslavia.) They proposed a compromise according to which the Soviet Union would accept some previously unpalatable rights provisions, while other conferees would accept the idea of a special international conference on disarmament, to be held in Stockholm in November. Four months later, with the delegates still in a deadlock, the conference received an additional nudge from Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez. The youthful Socialist leader summoned all 35 delegation heads to his Moncloa palace to announce the obvious: "The meeting is at an impasse." He then offered a package modifying the compromise agreement put forward by the neutral countries. Among Gonzalez' proposals: a future conference on the reunification of families separated by the Iron Curtain, to be held in Bern Switzerland.

Gonzalez' initiative produced some movement. The chief Soviet delegate, Anatoli Kovalev, soon accepted the compromise offer. The U.S. took longer to agree because, among other things, the Reagan Administration wanted strict guarantees that the Bern meeting would take place and that the guarantees would be treated as solemnly as the other Madrid undertakings. President Reagan's eventual decision to accept the package may have been influenced by a quiet Soviet assurance that it would allow an unspecified number of dissidents to emigrate.

Administration officials offer pragmatic reasons for endorsing the Madrid agreement. Among other things, the West European allies support the idea. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl is particularly enthusiastic about the agreement to hold a disarmament conference in Stockholm later this year. He expects the meeting to be politically useful at a time when there will probably be strong popular opposition in his country to the deployment of U.S.-built Pershing II and cruise missiles, scheduled to begin in December. Looking ahead to the 1984 presidential elections, U.S. officials see the Madrid agreement as another step in clearing the way for a possible summit between Reagan and Soviet President Yuri Andropov. Nevertheless, U.S. diplomats caution against reading too much into the end of the Madrid marathon. Said a top U.S. policymaker in Washington: "The U.S.-U.S.S.R. relationship has been so cold and so intractable for so long that it would be missing the boat to think we are looking at the beginning of a sea change." But even a small change in the international drift was welcome.

--By George Russell.

Reported by William Blaylock and Jane Walker/Madrid

With reporting by William Blaylock, Jane Walker This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.