SALT Accord?

Agreement said to be in sight

When President Carter told reporters at a White House bacon-and-egg breakfast last week that U.S.-Soviet differences on a SALT II agreement were minor and that further delays would be minimal, few of those present even raised their eyebrows. After all, Government spokesmen have been saying for at least two years that the second stage of a strategic arms limitation treaty is 95% complete. But TIME has learned that, almost as Carter was speaking, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin were achieving a breakthrough on that unresolved 5%.

The tentative SALT pact was reached during two days of talks at the State Department. Vance will fly to Geneva Dec. 20 for a final two-day session with his opposite number, Andrei Gromyko. Barring hitches, the two men will prepare for a summit meeting between Jimmy Carter and Soviet Communist Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev, probably in Washington during the week of Jan. 15.

For the itinerant Vance, December is proving to be a busy month. After his talks with Dobrynin last week, Vance flew to London, where he addressed the Royal Institute of International Affairs on what he called "the emerging SALT II agreement." This week he is visiting Egypt and Israel in a last-minute attempt to jolt their stalled peace talks back into motion. He will report to the President in Washington, then head for his meeting with Gromyko in Geneva before returning again to the U.S. capital on Dec. 23.

The anticipated January summit will not come a moment too soon for Carter. Last week, talking with nine newly elected Senators, he described SALT tersely as "the most important single foreign policy question" of his Administration. A SALT II failure, he warned, would be "disastrous." At the mid-term Democratic convention in Memphis, Carter promised that SALT II would require the Soviets "to destroy several hundred of their existing missiles." Brezhnev also dwelt on the topic last week, calling for a pact "without further procrastination."

Carter has already made plans to discuss SALT and other matters with his main European allies on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe on Jan. 5 and 6. The meeting, which Carter described as "somewhat of a social affair," since wives will be along, will include French President Valery Giscard dEstaing, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and British Prime Minister James Callaghan. Though there will be no formal agenda and no final communique, a Carter-Brezhnev summit would give the conferees plenty to talk about.

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