A Dismal Round of Arms Talks

By William R. Doerner.

"A dialogue is more than two monologues." So said Max Kampelman, chief U.S. negotiator, as a new series of nuclear-arms negotiations between Washington and Moscow opened last month in Geneva. But by the time the first round of discussions broke last week for a recess, scheduled to last until May 30, negotiators had failed to get beyond the double-monologue stage, and the words were old ones at that. Kampelman could claim only that the talks so far had "served a useful purpose in helping to bring about increased understanding of one another's positions." Overall, he declared, "we expected these negotiations to be difficult, and they have been."

That might have been an understatement. By the private estimates of U.S. officials, the latest round in Geneva ranks among the roughest and least productive in the long annals of superpower negotiations. For the Reagan Administration, which gained substantial political luster in pushing for the talks, the opening session was an ominous reminder that an acrimonious and endlessly drawn-out contest of wills in Geneva could tarnish that luster. A prolonged stalemate might also downgrade any U.S.-Soviet summit to an exercise in atmospherics.

The two sides spent a total of 54 hours in three sets of discussions: strategic arms reduction talks (START), which involve intercontinental ballistic missiles; intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF), which focus on European-based nuclear weaponry; and space weapons, dominated by Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also called Star Wars. To the discouragement of U.S. negotiators, Chief Soviet Negotiator Victor Karpov opened with demands that were unchanged from the last set of talks, which ended in late 1983 with Soviet walkouts. These included a proposal for long- range missiles that Washington contends is unresponsive to a U.S. offer to trade off Soviet and American strategic advantages evenly. The U.S. also objects to Moscow's insistence on a prohibition of U.S. medium-range missiles in Europe without a corresponding dismantling of Soviet medium-range missiles. On Star Wars, the Soviets kept up their insistence that the U.S. limit research on the plan. The U.S. argued that the two sides should concentrate first on reducing offensive-missile levels and wait to consider space arms when they are closer to reality, probably not for years. The Soviets, who evidently returned to the bargaining table largely to discuss Star Wars, consider this a violation of the original agenda for the three-part negotiations. Kampelman has declined to offer any new U.S. positions. Said a top State Department official: "Our flexibility has not yet been tested, and it won't be until the Soviets come forward first."

Soviet officials are openly expressing their gloom about prospects for the talks and improved East-West relations. In Washington the mood is marginally less pessimistic. A top White House official professed to be "neither surprised nor disappointed" by the early impasse, contending that it was "necessary to get through talking at each other first."

Just hours after the Geneva negotiators disbanded, new Soviet Communist Party Leader Mikhail Gorbachev all but accused Washington of having entered the new round in bad faith. Gorbachev said the first round "already provides grounds to say that Washington does not seek agreement with the Soviet Union," in part because "it refuses in general to discuss the question of preventing the arms race from spreading to space."

Three days later, at a meeting of Warsaw Pact leaders in the Polish capital, Gorbachev warned that continued U.S. foot dragging on placing Star Wars technology on the bargaining table could result in a new Soviet buildup. "If preparations for SDI continue," said the Soviet leader, "we will have no other choice than to undertake countermoves including, of course, the strengthening and upgrading of nuclear arms." He also went public with an arms-reduction offer that had been privately broached by Soviet negotiators --and rejected by American ones--in Geneva. He said the Soviet Union would be ready to slash strategic arsenals by 25% or more if the U.S. would cease its Star Wars program. "We would have no objections to making even deeper mutual cuts," he declared. "All this is possible if the arms race does not begin in space."

The latest Soviet gambit came with surprising swiftness and adroit timing. It was aimed squarely at public opinion in Western Europe, where the SDI is perceived by some to reduce the chances for arms reductions, just as a battered Reagan was scheduled to arrive there. While not rebuffing Gorbachev's offer outright, the State Department expressed cautious doubts that the proposal went far beyond previous Soviet formulations that the U.S. had found unacceptable. For his part, Reagan at week's end pronounced himself still "very willing" to meet with Gorbachev if, as expected, the Soviet leader attends the opening of the U.N. General Assembly in September.

With reporting by Johanna McGeary/Washington