East-West "There Will Be a Summit"

By William E. Smith

"The Soviets obviously intend to come here this year." That was the conclusion of a White House official after a week of intensive U.S.-Soviet diplomacy. For the past four months, Washington and Moscow have moved further and further away from the tentative feelings of cooperation engendered by the "spirit of Geneva," highlighted by the face-to-face meetings of Ronald Reagan and Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev in November. But last week, after a round of busy sessions in Washington, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were edging toward another summit. Declared Secretary of State George Shultz: "It's clear that both sides agreed that there should be a next meeting, in the U.S., that it should be successful, and something should come out of it."

That optimistic assessment stemmed from last week's visit to Washington by Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin, who has just completed 24 years of service as Moscow's man in the capital and who now takes on a job as a senior foreign policy adviser to Gorbachev. In his talks with Reagan and other Administration officials, Dobrynin continued to refrain from setting an actual date for a summit. But he did bring word that Soviet Foreign Minister Edward Shevardnadze was prepared to come to Washington for talks with Shultz on May 14 and 15 to lay the groundwork for a summit conference later this year. Dobrynin assured the President that while Gorbachev was setting no "preconditions" for the meeting, the Kremlin wanted to know ahead of time--presumably by prior agreement--what could be accomplished. The U.S. reply: fair enough. At his press conference the following evening, President Reagan sidestepped questions about recent Soviet criticism of his policies. "We're trying to go forward," he maintained. "We're planning for a summit here." As part of his ritual of leave-taking, Dobrynin presented Reagan with an electric samovar for making tea and nine blue-and-white porcelain figurines. More important, he gave the President a letter from Gorbachev in which the Soviet leader expressed his desire for "concrete agreements" at the next summit and said that he was "still serious about maintaining the dialogue" begun at Geneva.

Dobrynin last week spelled out the Kremlin's current views in a series of three meetings: a 90-minute breakfast Monday with Shultz and National Security Adviser John Poindexter, a 75-minute session Tuesday in the Oval Office with the President and his top aides and a follow-up discussion with Shultz on Wednesday. Dobrynin described Soviet "confusion" over U.S. motives toward the Soviet Union, citing nuclear tests, Administration efforts to reduce the number of Soviet diplomats at the United Nations and U.S. maneuvers in the Black Sea. American officials, in turn, expressed "confusion" over such Soviet activities as supplying surface-to-air missiles to Libya and stepped-up attacks in Afghanistan. Each side complained that the other was stalling on arms negotiations, and then agreed that there was a "reason to re-engage."

In the Soviet appeal for "practical results," Dobrynin recalled his own extensive experience in summitry. The meeting of Dwight Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev in the U.S. in 1959, as well as the subsequent summit talks between Khrushchev and John Kennedy in Vienna, were "disastrous," said Dobrynin, because both sessions had been inadequately prepared. By contrast, he continued, the summit meetings during the '70s, involving Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, had been essentially successful because they were well planned and the outcomes known in advance. Thus, according to a senior U.S. official, considerable time last week "was spent on making sure that both sides understood which items we would go to work on and how we would proceed toward a summit."

The two sides agreed to return to the "quiet diplomacy" that characterized the preparations for Geneva. That means an avoidance of provocative public statements that have become common in recent weeks and, instead, a reliance on communications through the Soviet embassy in Washington and the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Until a replacement for Dobrynin is named, Shultz will deal with the Soviet charge d'affaires, Oleg Sokolov, an experienced diplomat who was also a key player at Geneva. After the Shevardnadze visit in mid-May, Shultz will probably return the call in Moscow by late June. These meetings, in the words of one senior U.S. official, are intended "to force a sense of deadlines on everyone."

Dobrynin emphasized two long-standing Soviet concerns: nuclear testing and intermediate-range missiles. Both sides believe it is possible to reach some kind of interim agreement to reduce the Soviet and U.S. missile arsenals in Europe. On nuclear testing, however, the Reagan Administration is in no mood to compromise. Says Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger: "If we are to depend on the reliability of our nuclear stockpile, then we must test." Partly because of midterm congressional elections and partly because of the complexity of the subjects that need to be clarified before a meeting, a summit will probably not be held until late November or early December. "Later rather than earlier seems to be the best bet," predicts one U.S. official. "But there will be a 1986 summit."

Shultz described the Dobrynin talks as "very substantive and constructive." His aides felt the Soviet visitor had taken the right steps toward restoring some of the momentum that has been lost since Geneva. On the other hand, U.S. officials regard the present diplomatic process as fragile. Apart from the question of whether progress on vital issues is really possible, there is the fact that the U.S. must decide shortly on whether to continue to abide by the restraints on nuclear arsenals imposed by the unratified SALT II agreement. A new Trident submarine, equipped with 24 ballistic missiles, is scheduled to begin sea trials on May 20. The vessel's entry into the U.S. arsenal would mean going over the ceilings set by the treaty. As Reagan reiterated in his midweek press conference, no decision on the question of limits has yet been made. The battle will be joined this week by the National Security Council, which is scheduled to debate the options. Top Pentagon officials, mindful of alleged Soviet violations of the treaty, are lobbying hard to break through SALT II's numerical ceilings. One argument: that the forced decommissioning of two existing American submarines would be an unnecessary waste of the nation's resources.

The State Department, for its part, is convinced that it would be "politically disastrous" for the U.S. to violate the numerical limits set by SALT II. To do so, Shultz argues, would outrage America's friends, alienate domestic public opinion, undermine current arms negotiations and possibly even derail the summit. He hopes to enlist the support of U.S. allies at the Tokyo economic summit in May, before President Reagan reaches a final decision.

Another possible impediment to a productive Reagan-Gorbachev meeting was the Administration's decision to go ahead with an underground nuclear test in Nevada last week after a two-day delay that had been caused by bad weather. The Soviet Union, which had adopted a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear testing last August, denounced the U.S. action and said that the U.S.S.R. too would resume testing. The Soviet news agency TASS described the U.S. test, which was code-named Mighty Oak, as a "dangerous destabilizing step" and an indication that the Reagan Administration "is still chasing the will-o'-the- wisp of military superiority."

In Washington, reaction to the test of the relatively small device of less than 20 kilotons, designed to assess the effect of a nuclear explosion on missile warheads and components, split largely along party lines. Senator John Warner, the Virginia Republican, supported the continuation of testing. Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts declared that the Administration was "squandering one of the best opportunities in many years to achieve a comprehensive test-ban treaty." At the Nevada test site, almost 100 protesters from Greenpeace, the international environmental and antinuclear organization, were arrested in the course of the week. Whatever else the detonation may have accomplished, it demonstrated to Gorbachev that the U.S. is not prepared to concede anything on the testing issue.

Nonetheless, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union seemed committed to proceeding toward a summit later this year. The Soviets continued to express disappointment over the lack of progress on central arms-control issues. But Dobrynin's messages last week, both literal and atmospheric, will make it difficult for Gorbachev to back out without considerable provocation. What remains to be seen is whether the Reagan Administration's policy of challenging the Soviets directly and in places like Libya and Nicaragua will force concessions or lead to another stalemate over the summit.

With reporting by James O. Jackson/Moscow and Johanna McGeary/Washington