Just Small Talk in Geneva

By William A. Henry III.

The room rated at least a footnote in history: in this modest, comfortably decorated chamber at the Soviet mission in Geneva, much of the negotiating had taken place before the 1979 SALT II agreement. It seemed a fitting place to step into after the warm if formal greeting offered last week by Victor Karpov, the chief Soviet negotiator for a new round of arms talks, to his U.S. counterparts, Max Kampelman, John Tower and Maynard Glitman. Before Karpov waved the Americans in, he said to Kampelman, the leader: "I hope that our meeting will not be the last one but one of the first in a series, that we will negotiate and reach an agreement." Responded Kampelman, smiling widely but speaking coolly: "Our objective is to reach an agreement too. I hope that this is a good omen."

As it happened, after waiting 15 months for the Soviets to return to the bargaining table, the U.S. negotiators arrived for the opening 11 a.m. session some twelve minutes late. The reason could scarcely have offended their hosts: the U.S. team had stopped off at another Soviet villa to sign a condolence book set out to mark the death of Konstantin Chernenko. Once the Americans showed up, the four negotiators and their interpreters sat down and talked, behind closed doors, for two hours and 45 minutes. They agreed on at least one point: it would be best not to discuss with reporters anything consequential from preliminary sessions. "Therefore," Kampelman said at a press conference, "I will be unable to answer your questions."

The second session, held two days later at the U.S. mission, lasted just under two hours. It consisted mostly of exchanges of credentials and statements of position. Unlike the first session, the second involved Karpov's principal associates, Yuli Kvitsinsky and Alexei Obukhov. The two had sat out the opening meeting, apparently to underscore the Soviet position that the three "baskets" of arms issues under consideration must be resolved together.

Glitman and Obukhov will be the point men on intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) negotiations, which deal mostly with weapons deployed in Europe. Tower and Karpov will square off over intercontinental ballistic missiles in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks. Kvitsinsky and Kampelman will confront each other on the touchiest issue in the negotiations, space weapons. The Soviets hope to knock out President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as Star Wars, while it is still in the research stage. The overall American posture, by contrast, is to reduce existing offensive weapons and worry at a later date about placing limits on space-based defensive systems that are not yet in operation.

The U.S. negotiators face three significant challenges away from the table: to demonstrate to the Soviets that America's allies are united behind the basic U.S. stance, to satisfy members of both parties in Congress that the U.S. is negotiating in good faith and that its proposals are sound, and to cope with the press in a way that maximizes U.S. public support for the Administration's proposals.

The West European antimissile movement, which the Soviets have fervently encouraged, staged small, mostly discreet demonstrations across the street from the Soviet mission; a handful of Americans joined them. Dissent was far more evident in Belgium, which has been debating whether to deploy U.S. cruise missiles. To ensure that the basing plan went ahead, Kampelman, Tower and Glitman lobbied Prime Minister Wilfried Martens during a day trip to Brussels on Monday. On Friday, Martens announced Belgium would proceed because an accord on limiting INF missiles would be "impossible in the short term"; hours later, the first cruises arrived in the country.

Kampelman and his colleagues also had to contend with the scrutiny of ten visiting U.S. Senators and eight Congressmen, all of whom had to be briefed regularly. Said Senate Minority Leader Robert Byrd, one of the group: "If a treaty should emerge, we in the Senate would need to have more than a cursory knowledge of it." Although Kampelman & Co. readily offered backgrounding, they fear that leaks, misstatements and well-meant meddling by the lawmakers could disrupt the talks.

Both sides were adroit enough at small talk to placate the headline-hungry press. In a lively, candid meeting with reporters before the first session, Karpov acknowledged that Mikhail Gorbachev was demonstrating leadership even before Chernenko died. Said Karpov: "He presided over the meeting of the Politburo that approved (my) instructions." Karpov ducked, however, a follow- up question on whether Chernenko had been expected to remain alive throughout | the talks. The Soviets ushered photographers gracefully into and out of the opening of their session. The U.S., by contrast, herded cameramen out with a loud countdown of "five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one." Glitman turned to Karpov and said with a grin, "It's a good thing they didn't say 'blast off.' " At the same session, Kampelman gestured to photographers and said to Karpov, "Maybe we should shake hands," then leaned across the table to do so. Added Kampelman: "They're working people. We have to sympathize." Still, it was Karpov who got off the deftest line, one that went to the heart of the basic political question underlying all the ceremony. Asked by a reporter whether he felt affected by working in the room where SALT II was hammered out, Karpov replied that if both sides are cooperating to reach an agreement, they could do their work even "on the kitchen floor."

With reporting by John Moody/Geneva and Gary Yerkey/Brussels