Now a Peace Offensive

Muskie goes to meet Gromyko and finds Moscow urging a new summit

"Sort of a diplomatic minuet" was Edmund Muskie's prediction about his first encounter as Secretary of State with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. But by the time the two finally met last week, the drum beats and trumpet calls from the capitals of the world had turned into a virtual symphony. NATO was convening in Brussels while the Warsaw Pact was gathering in Warsaw; Naples played host to a meeting of European Community foreign ministers, and Islamabad welcomed officials from the Islamic Conference states. Austria was celebrating the 25th anniversary of the end of postwar occupation, a glittering occasion that brought East and West together and provided the setting for the Muskie-Gromyko meeting. And this week, French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Soviet Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev planned to get together for their very own summit. Said a senior Administration official: "This is the long-awaited Soviet peace offensive -- with France as the Trojan horse."

Events were unfolding so fast that observers were having difficulty analyzing what everything meant. It seemed clear, however, that diplomats from many of the world's key countries were attempting new approaches to the two main problems that have raised international tensions to dangerous heights in the past half-year: the seizing of 53 American hostages by Iranian militants and the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

News of the Brezhnev-Giscard parley, to be held in Poland with Polish Communist Leader Edward Gierek as host, surprised and confounded many Western diplomats. West German officials, perhaps piqued because Chancellor Helmut Schmidt had been upstaged by Giscard, regarded the summit as another Soviet at tempt to shatter Western solidarity. On the other hand, French officials maintained that Giscard was only following Charles de Gaulle's policy of trying to mediate between East and West. The focus of the summit was not disclosed in advance, but probable topics included NATO'S plans to deploy medium-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe, which have upset the Soviets, and the Warsaw Pact's year-old call for a European conference on detente and disarmament.

Concern about East-West ties was also the reason for worldwide interest in the Muskie-Gromyko meeting in Vienna, the first Cabinet-level talks between Washington and Moscow since the Afghanistan invasion last December. Accompanied only by their interpreters, the two ministers talked for three hours--an hour longer than planned--in an elegant marble room inside the former Habsburg imperial palace. After the session Muskie looked distinctly somber as he re-emerged into the klieg lights and said only that "the discussion fully justified my belief that it was necessary." As for the prospects of future talks, Muskie observed that "the meeting might lead to further discussions," but such details could not be revealed until he reports to Jimmy Carter.

The Muskie-Gromyko encounter thus yielded few clues about the course that the superpower relationship might take. What the meeting did show is two things: 1) the Carter Administration's determination to deal sternly with Moscow so long as Soviet troops remain in Afghanistan and 2) Muskie's readiness to be a blunt spokesman for this position. In his address at the Austrian celebrations, with Gromyko sitting just a few feet from him, Muskie clearly alluded to the Afghanistan invasion as he said that "the principles of neutrality, of independence and territorial integrity so respected in the case of Austria are today being violated . . . An act of aggression anywhere threatens security everywhere."

Gromyko's speech, in contrast, blamed current world tensions on the West and proclaimed that the "Soviet Union is a supporter of detente." These sentiments summed up Moscow's new "peace offensive," which is apparently designed to repair the damage done to its reputation by the invasion of Afghanistan. The scope of the new offensive was outlined in Warsaw at a high-powered gathering of Brezhnev and the heads of the other Warsaw Pact states.

The Soviet-led campaign contains three main elements:

1) A call for a "top-level meeting of the leaders of states of all the regions of the world." This global summit, said a lengthy Warsaw Pact "declaration," would focus on "the task of removing hotbeds of international tension and preventing war."

2) A long list of proposals on arms control. A freeze on the size of all military forces in Europe, a ban on all nuclear testing, negotiations to limit the deployment of medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe, the prohibition of chemical and radiological weapons, and the ratification of the U.S.-Soviet SALT II treaty.

3) A formula for settling the Afghanistan crisis. Issued by the Soviet-installed regime in Kabul, but almost certainly drafted in Moscow, the proposal provides for a withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan if Iran, Pakistan and the U.S. would stop aiding the Afghan rebels. (This supposed aid, which has long been denied by the U.S., has been Moscow's constant excuse for its intervention in Afghanistan.)

With these proposals, Moscow hopes to revive its dialogue with the West. Another aim of the "peace offensive" is to divide Washington from its allies. Last week's lengthy Warsaw Pact declaration, for example, spares the West European governments the criticism that is heaped on Washington.

For all the bluster of the "peace offensive," it is unlikely that Moscow will be willing to make the major concessions, such as accepting a truly neutral Afghanistan, that would be necessary to give detente new life. The Soviets argue that it is up to Washington to demonstrate its commitment to better relations by, among other things, ratifying SALT II, calling off the boycott campaign against the Moscow Olympics and reversing the decision to deploy medium-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe.

Top Western diplomats greeted this array of Soviet proposals with considerable skepticism. Muskie and his British, French and West German counterparts discussed the new Soviet campaign at a breakfast meeting in Vienna. Muskie called the Afghanistan plan a "cosmetic and not a meaningful proposal." But British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, who has long been pushing his own ideas for the neutralization of Afghanistan, thought the Soviet proposal should at least be explored. Said he: "We should see if we can build on it." Carrington observed, however, that the Soviet plan would simply ratify the conquest of Afghanistan and did not even provide guarantees for a Soviet withdrawal. The initial view of France's Foreign Minister Jean Francois-Poncet: "Nothing new."

Moscow's call for conferences received an equally cool welcome. The U.S. believes that summits are useful primarily to ratify agreements already reached. Otherwise, the fanfare surrounding such meetings leads to false hopes and possible misunderstandings. As for the Warsaw Pact proposals on arms control in Europe, a senior British diplomat suggested that the most effective means of lessening tensions would be for the Soviets to halt their deployment of SS-20 nuclear missiles.

Despite open skepticism, the lengthy Soviet proposals are being carefully studied by the West for passages that might lead to fruitful negotiations in the future. Argued a West German diplomat: "We need to take initiatives ourselves in this psychological warfare."

It was more than psychological warfare that concerned the U.S. and its allies they met in Brussels earlier in the The meeting originally was going be one of the periodic gatherings of defense ministers. But Jimmy Carter had urged that foreign ministers also attend in order to signal the West's growing alarm at Moscow's military adventurism. In the course of 36 hectic hours in Brussels, Muskie emphasized Washington's determination to meet the Soviet challenge. Said British Defense Minister Francis Pym: "Muskie repeated the U.S commitment to Europe in the strongest terms I have ever heard."

Muskie also stressed to the Europeans an argument that has become increasingly pointed since the invasion of Afghanistan: that they must carry a heavier defense burden in order to free some U.S. military resources for duty in the now strategically critical Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. U.S. officials had been pressing the Europeans on this for several months, and last week the allies agreed on a two-stage program to accelerate NATO's already ambitious two-year-old Long Term Defense Program. As a first stage, the alliance plans to acquire more conventional battlefield weapons within the next year, increase ammunition stockpiles and improve defenses against Soviet chemical warfare. Then by the mid-1980s, the allies intend to complete the program's second stage: expand reserve forces, help the U.S. build up stocks of munitions for U.S. units to be dispatched to Europe in an emergency, deploy more electronic jamming devices and remodel civilian aircraft so that they could be converted quickly to carry troops and weapons.

In NATO'S conference hall, Muskie mentioned Iran only briefly, but it was one of the main topics on his agenda during the one-on-one talks that he had with allied foreign ministers. Washington had made it clear that it expected the allies to honor last month's promise that they would impose economic sanctions on Iran if there was no significant progress toward freeing the 53 U.S. hostages by May 17. Before Muskie left for Europe, Jimmy Carter said that "obviously, each country has to decide exactly the level of sanctions to be maintained. But the more compatible the sanctions are among the allies ... obviously the better off we are." Just how compatible was to have been decided at the Naples Common Market meeting over the weekend.

Muskie neither threatened nor cajoled, but he stressed in his private sessions with the ministers that the Carter Administration regarded sanctions as "important" because they would inflict hardship and a sense of isolation on the Tehran regime. To reporters, he added that "pain is a highly motivating force" and "sanctions [are] a specific way of communicating to Iran."

The Europeans, however, have been growing increasingly cool to the idea of sanctions. Explained Italian Columnist Alfredo Pieroni: "The hostages are not a global problem. In a world thirsty for petroleum, it is not productive to push one of the great oil producers into the arms of the Soviet Union." Said a senior West German Chancellery aide: "The trick with sanctions is to squeeze the Iranians enough to be persuasive without alienating them entirely. But in the long run, sanctions never work anyway."

Allied leaders endorsed sanctions in April mainly to persuade the U.S. not to use military action, like a naval blockade, to gain the hostages' freedom. But since the dismal failure of the rescue mission, Carter has indicated he is no longer considering military measures. That has reduced the incentive for the allies to impose sanctions. Also, West European leaders are concerned about the safety of the several thousands of their countrymen who still work in Iran.

According to British sources, tough sanctions at this moment could jeopardize fragile talks that are now under way between the West Europeans and top Iranian officials. British Ambassador Sir John Graham last week was asked by Iranian President Abolhassan Banisadr to try to delay a Common Market decision on sanctions in order to give Iran's so-called moderates more time to work for the hostages' release. The trouble with this is that Tehran has repeatedly won postponements of threatened U.S. retaliatory measures by claiming that Iranian moderates needed more time, but after each postponement, the moderates could not, or would not, deliver the hostages.

Though the allies proved reluctant to follow Muskie's urgings on sanctions, they were surprised and impressed by the new Secretary. Said a senior NATO official: "He has manner, presence and style. He didn't use the line that he was a 'new boy'; that would have turned off the Europeans immediately. He conveyed the feeling of a man in command of his job."

To a European foreign minister who had been worried about Muskie's lack of diplomatic experience, the American came across as "serious, correct and very intuitive, not a lawyer like Vance. And I believe that he is not a person to be bullied by anybody." Muskie indeed admitted to newsmen that "I've always found it useful for people to think of me as an intimidating sort of fellow."

Unlike Cyrus Vance, who was reticent and believed that the less he said on an issue the better, Muskie is talkative to the point of garrulity. Only once did his diplomatic presence fail him totally. During a lengthy speech on Austrian history at the festivities in Vienna, Muskie fell asleep in his very prominent front-row seat. Lord Carrington tried to wake him with a jab of his elbow, but finally gave up. Not until applause rang out did the Secretary of State's head snap up and his body straighten. Muskie did not seem particularly embarrassed. In his first diplomatic venture, he had demonstrated that when necessary he can be alert indeed.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.