Only a Step, But an Encouraging One

By George J. Church.

A certain step has been made in establishing a dialogue between our two countries.

--Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, on leaving Geneva Wednesday morning

This week's meeting in Geneva, while only a single step, is the beginning of a new dialogue between the United States and the Soviet Union.

--President Reagan, at his news con ference in Washington Wednesday night

It was surely the first time that Gromyko and Reagan had felt disposed to echo each other. But, then, they faced an unfamiliar task: describing an agreement that Gromyko had reached with Secretary of State George Shultz. To be sure, it was only an agreement to talk some more--specifically, to resume formal arms-control bargaining at a time and place to be selected within a month. Moreover, the U.S. and Soviet positions entering those new negotiations are very far apart; there is no assurance that they can be harmonized. Nonetheless, the similar statements by Gromyko and Reagan pointed to a tacit understanding that the nuclear superpowers should at least put aside polemics while searching for a compromise.

To get even that far required two days of tense discussions, with the outcome in doubt until the very end. The mere announcement that Shultz and Gromyko would meet in Geneva Jan. 7 and 8 initially raised high hopes around the world. But by the time the U.S. and Soviet delegations arrived in the Swiss city, the negotiating climate seemed not much warmer than the temperature, which dropped so low (14 degrees F) that Gromyko said jokingly that he would "rather be in Siberia." Both sides came in talking so tough that U.S. journalists in the immense press corps (see box) were speculating about an outright collapse of the talks.

Gromyko in fact did threaten to walk out on the spot if the U.S. would not renounce, in advance of any formal bargaining, its Strategic Defense Initiative to develop a system that could intercept and destroy nuclear missiles. Shultz replied that the U.S. would rather leave Geneva without an agreement than abandon SDI, which is popularly known as Star Wars. The Soviets decided to try again later and kept talking. Nonetheless, said Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, a member of Shultz's team, "if the final session Tuesday afternoon had ended on schedule (at 5 p.m.), the conference would have failed." Even after the delegations went into overtime, says another American official, no one could be certain that a deal would be struck "until five minutes before it finally happened," at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

The agreement contained concessions by both sides, but the Soviets seemed to make more than the Americans did. Essentially, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. agreed to conduct three sets of negotiations simultaneously. Each nation will send a single negotiating team, but it will be divided into three subgroups. One will discuss long-range strategic weapons: nuclear warheads carried by intercontinental missiles or launched from submarines or bombers. The second will bargain about intermediate-range weapons, primarily Soviet SS-20 missiles targeted on Western Europe and U.S. Pershing II and cruise missiles deployed by NATO countries and capable of hitting the U.S.S.R. The third group will grapple with what may be the most contentious issue of all: defensive systems, including Star Wars, anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons and, at Shultz's insistence, such Soviet ground-based systems as antiballistic missiles, radars and antiaircraft devices.

This approach was pretty much what the U.S. had advocated, and the Soviets had rejected, last summer. Moscow at that time proposed bargaining about space weapons like Star Wars; the U.S. insisted any new talks would have to cover offensive weapons too. The Kremlin last week in effect agreed to resume the START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) and INF (Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces) negotiations that it broke off at the end of 1983, when the NATO missile deployment began. Moscow had long insisted that the U.S. would have to pull the missiles out as a precondition for new talks, but Gromyko made no such demand last week. Shultz did not even have to defend the U.S. plan to begin testing an ASAT system this spring. Gromyko had been expected to repeat a Soviet demand of last summer that any new negotiations begin with a moratorium on antisatellite tests, but according to U.S. briefers, he never mentioned the subject.

"We got what we wanted," Shultz reportedly told Reagan when he returned to Washington Wednesday. National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane told reporters in Geneva that on the familiar scale of 1 to 10, he would rate American success 8. American hard-liners contended that the agreement vindicated their belief that the U.S. could bring Moscow back to the bargaining table by hanging tough. Perle noted the Soviets' silence on removal of U.S. missiles from Western Europe and crowed, somewhat ungraciously, "We accepted their capitulation graciously."

That overstates the case. The Soviets also got what they most wanted: a U.S. commitment to discuss Star Wars in the same general forum with offensive weapons. If it could not hold Star Wars off the table entirely, Washington had wanted to keep talks on offensive and defensive systems separate. Its hope was to conclude a pact that would sharply reduce the numbers of missiles and warheads without agreeing to any limit on the Star Wars program. But even if the Soviets should agree to deep cuts in offensive weapons, the formula worked out at Geneva gives them a chance to demand that defensive systems also be limited before a single missile is actually dismantled or a single warhead destroyed.

The degree of linkage between the three sets of talks was left deliberately vague in the Geneva communique, and the two sides began arguing over it as soon as the conference ended. The Soviet news agency TASS asserted, in the name of the Soviet Politburo, that "only the strict observance" of the Geneva formula "in all of its parts can assure real progress." That seemed to be a warning that any deal must involve agreements in all three sets of talks, including the one involving Star Wars. Paul Nitze, the veteran negotiator who is now a special arms-control adviser to Shultz, countered that the U.S. "saw no reason" why an accord could not be reached in one set of negotiations and put into effect independently of the others. But another U.S. official conceded that under the Geneva proposals, "each side can raise any linkages that it wants."

In any case, the Soviets left no doubt that killing Star Wars remains their prime objective. Shultz last week devoted many of his 14 hours of talks with Gromyko to explaining the U.S. position that successful development of a defensive system would enhance nuclear stability and lessen the danger of a cataclysm. He got nowhere. Gromyko once grumbled, "I have heard six explanations of SDI and I still do not understand your point." In his departure statement, which he read to reporters in English, Moscow's Foreign Minister took care to note that "the Soviet side particularly stressed the importance of preventing the militarization of outer space."

The U.S. has been equally unyielding. Asked at his news conference whether Washington would consider "setting limits on the deployment and the testing of Star Wars," Reagan replied, "I think that would be way ahead of ourselves. We don't even know what kind of weapon, if we were able to come up with one, that this would be." Research must continue, he said, "to see if there isn't some weapon that is more humane and moral" than the threat of nuclear retaliation.

Reagan did add that if a successful system is developed, "then is the time to turn to the world, to our allies, possibly even our adversaries," for discussions preceding actual deployment. But that point could be far in the future. Moreover, the Soviets consider SDI research to be a threat even if it never produces a deployable Star Wars system, because it might lead to technological breakthroughs that would give the U.S. an insurmountable lead in offensive types of weapons, including those that might be based in space.

American diplomats expect a Soviet propaganda campaign aimed at convincing U.S. allies, and world opinion generally, that a ban on Star Wars must be part of any new arms-control agreement. To get a head start on countering such pressure, members of Shultz's team fanned out to allied capitals to explain the U.S. position as soon as the Geneva talks ended. Kenneth Adelman, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, even ventured into Eastern Europe to talk to the leaders of Communist countries.

Prospects for an agreement on offensive nuclear weapons look somewhat better, though very far from assured. Simultaneous discussion of strategic and ! intermediate-range missiles might afford an opportunity to negotiate complicated trade-offs between different types of weapons that did not exist when the START and INF talks were kept rigidly separate. More immediately, said one U.S. official, Shultz carried to Geneva new "concepts" on offensive weapons "and the Soviets were informed of them."

He did not say what they include, but Reagan gave a hint at his news conference. The President recalled that in START the U.S. initially proposed extra-deep cuts in heavy land-based missiles and the U.S.S.R. refused because those silo-fired behemoths constitute a much bigger part of the Soviet than of the U.S. arsenal. Now, said the President, "one of the things that we've made clear to the Soviets is that we recognize there may be differences with regard to the mix of weapons on both sides and we're prepared to deal with that problem, and where perhaps we have something that is an advantage to us, they have something that's an advantage to them, to discuss trade-offs in that area." Two categories in which the U.S. leads are submarine-launched missiles and intercontinental bombers.

Neither side had much to say at Geneva about intermediate-range missiles--at least that it was ready to disclose to the press. Accounts differed as to whether Gromyko had renewed the Soviet demand that British and French nuclear forces be counted in any eventual agreement. It really did not matter much; he is quite certain to do so when actual bargaining resumes. The U.S. is equally sure to stick to its position that American and Soviet intermediate- range missiles be limited to equal numbers of warheads. It will again argue that British and French missiles must be left out of the equation because the U.S.--and Britain and France--believes an INF agreement should limit only the arsenals of the superpowers.

One important, though perhaps temporary, outgrowth of the talks was that the 42-man U.S. delegation managed for once to paper over its own splits. State Department moderates and Pentagon hawks remain divided over what compromises, if any, to offer when hard bargaining begins. But in Geneva they cooperated in drafting position papers, cables to Washington and communique language even though, for the sake of secure communications with the White House, they were jammed together elbow to elbow in a small plastic bubble specially set up inside the U.S. mission.

Aside from notetakers and translators, only Nitze, McFarlane and U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Arthur Hartman accompanied Shultz to the actual meetings; the Soviet side included Gromyko, Ambassador to Washington Anatoli Dobrynin, First Deputy Foreign Minister Georgi Kornienko and Arms Negotiator Victor Karpov. From time to time one of the U.S. team, usually McFarlane, entered the bubble, where briefing papers often disappeared under salami sandwiches and coffee cups, to inform the rest of the delegation what was happening. At the end, two veteran Washington antagonists even indulged in some genial clowning before journalists at the Hotel Intercontinental. As Perle waited for an elevator, his rival, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Burt, slipped behind him and impishly poked two fingers above Perle's head to suggest devil's horns.

However happy the atmosphere seemed to be in Geneva, the road ahead is bound to be long and difficult. Gromyko spoke of "the immense tasks which must be addressed in the course of these negotiations." Again using remarkably similar language, Reagan noted, "These new negotiations will be difficult as we grapple with the issues so central to peace and security for ourselves, our allies and the world." But, echoing each other yet a third time, the two pledged a major effort. Gromyko: "The Soviet Union is prepared to go its part of the road." Reagan: "For our part, we'll be flexible, patient and determined."

Did they mean it? One good augury for future negotiations is that the Geneva talks were conducted in a serious spirit. Gromyko made clear the Soviet opposition to Star Wars time and again. But the Americans agreed that he never spoke heatedly. Shultz was also polite, though stern, even when complaining about alleged Soviet violations of existing arms-control treaties. The two sides proved adept at framing communique language ambiguous enough to accommodate their differences.

The best augury of all is that each side apparently felt that it could not afford to be the obstacle to further negotiations. Moscow evidently concluded that stonewalling was getting it nowhere. Its walkout from the 1983 bargaining failed to stop or even slow the deployment of U.S. missiles in Western Europe, and its long refusal to resume negotiations without rigid preconditions only made the Soviets look obstreperous. Washington similarly could not turn down a halfway reasonable Soviet offer without arousing a storm of protest from allies, Congress and the American public. Summarizes one American official: . "We both needed to come away the good guy."

Certainly the statesmanlike attitude both sides showed in Geneva will be difficult to sustain over the many months--quite likely years--that remain before a substantive agreement can be negotiated. But the compulsion to strike a pose of reasonableness at least served to get things started.

With reporting by Johanna McGeary and Bruce van Voorst/Geneva