Diplomatic Word Games

"A good meeting" was how a cautious State Department official described the talk between Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Premier Nikolai Tikhonov in New Delhi. In the first high-level meeting between the two nations since President Reagan's White House get-together with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in Septem ber, the two men conferred for 20 minutes at the Soviet embassy, following Indira Gandhi's funeral. Afterward, Shultz said he had relayed U.S. wishes for a "constructive relationship," while Soviet TV reported that Tikhonov had made a plea for "peaceful co-existence."

The polite language of diploma cy only partly disguised Washington's fury over the Soviet press's accusations that the Central Intelligence Agency was behind Mrs. Gandhi's assassination. The day after the Indian leader's death, the So viet news agency TASS reported that Sikh "extremists and spies" had admitted being trained by the CIA. Pravda, the Communist Party daily, also contended that the CIA had stirred up the separatist movement in India. An angry Shultz spent the first half of the meeting with Tikhonov complaining about the news accounts, adding that the U.S. would hold the Soviets responsible if American lives in India were threatened because of the charges.

Tikhonov blandly assured Shultz that TASS was only quoting "outside sources" and that the allegations did not reflect the Kremlin's official view. A State Department aide characterized the exchange somewhat differently. Said the official: "There was a lot of shouting." Some Western diplomats in Moscow speculated that the Soviet charges were meant to deflect attention from Italian Judge Ilario Martella's report indicting three Bulgarians (and by implication the Soviet KGB) for conspiring to murder Pope John Paul II in 1981 .

The meeting grew more cordial when the two discussed the need for better relations. Tikhonov told Shultz he hoped to see him in Moscow soon. "Is that an invitation?" Shultz asked. "That is Foreign Minister Gromyko's job, not mine," Tikhonov replied. "But I presume we will see more of you." It is perhaps as well that the pair did not agree to get together too soon. Three days later, in his first major speech since his Washington visit, Gromyko pointedly referred to Mrs. Gandhi's murder as "a heinous crime" and blasted "the criminal policy of state terrorism pursued by the U.S."