A Slow, Slow Thaw

Despite the warmth of Brezhnev's meeting with Brandt, the armies of East and West still face each other in Central Europe. On that front, thawing the cold war is proving to be much more difficult than freezing it. Last week, after 3 1/2 months of diplomatic delay and more than 70 top-secret meetings, talks to reduce the level of troops in that region finally began in Vienna, but under less than propitious circumstances.

The first plenary session lasted a mere nine minutes, during which the twelve NATO and seven Warsaw Pact delegations adopted an "arrangement on participation and procedures to be applied to the present consultations and forthcoming negotiations." Translation: the delegates had agreed to sit in alphabetical order around the table rather than grouped in blocs. But where they sat was, at least symbolically, something of a disappointment. The conference had been delayed for so long that it had lost its hold on the baroque council hall in Vienna's Imperial Palace. The delegates instead assembled in the austere meeting rooms of the International Atomic Energy Agency, from which they had to beg last-minute shelter.

Stone Wall. Even worse, the delegates could not agree on a name for the negotiations. The NATO powers proposed that it be called a conference for Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions (MBFR). That seemingly innocuous suggestion ran into a Soviet stone wall. Because East bloc nations have more troops and armor in Central Europe and even larger numbers near by, any "balanced" reduction would force a greater numerical cut upon them than upon Western nations. As a result, almost every meaningful word was slashed from the official communique of the first session, and the conference was blandly described as "the consultations related to Central Europe."

The main dispute that delayed the start of the sessions was over which nations rightfully belonged at the "consultations." The NATO powers insisted that since Hungary is clearly part of Central Europe, it ought to participate in the talks as a full member. That would place the 40,000 or so Soviet troops stationed in Hungary under the jurisdiction of the conference; the Russians, naturally, balked. So stubbornly did they insist that Hungary attend only as a nonvoting observer that the NATO powers reluctantly gave in.

Following the empty pleasantries of the opening sessions, both sides presented their proposals for an agenda. Now the talks will likely resubmerge for a while, as diplomats for the two sides secretly hammer out an agenda, a place and an autumn date for the first full-dress meetings. U.S. officials, counseling "patience," have warned that MBFR may be "ten times as complex as SALT."

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