Diplomacy Giving Better Than She Got

By William R. Doerner

For a woman who is as punctual as she is punctilious, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher seemed to lose all track of time. The occasion was a five- day official visit last week to the Soviet Union that she breathlessly declared her most "fascinating and invigorating" ever. At a performance of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake in Moscow's Bolshoi Theater, Thatcher and Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev delayed the second act for 20 minutes while they conferred over smoked sturgeon about arms control. The next day Foreign Minister Sir Geoffrey Howe was forced to improvise at a British embassy luncheon when the Prime Minister arrived two hours late. Reason: her morning meeting with Gorbachev had gone into overtime.

No grand diplomatic breakthroughs were achieved. But Thatcher, who is ! expected to call elections sometime this year, certainly bolstered her stature among voters at home -- and among Britain's allies on the Continent. Indeed, she had prepped for the trip by meeting with key West European leaders, and she was anxious to register their measured and skeptical reaction to Gorbachev's proposal for withdrawing all U.S. and Soviet intermediate-range nuclear forces from Europe.

In doing so, she spent a total of 13 hours with Gorbachev in meetings that British officials described as respectful and constructive, though often fiercely argumentative. Her defense of nuclear deterrence was so impassioned that Soviet officials seemed at a loss to describe the chasm that separated the two leaders. Said Georgi Arbatov, director of the Soviet Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies: "On nuclear issues, President Reagan is more forward-looking than Thatcher. At least Reagan understands that he, humanity and America can't live forever with nuclear weapons."

While the Prime Minister told Gorbachev of her public support for the "zero option" proposal for complete withdrawal of INF weapons, she insisted that any agreement would have to be accompanied by a buildup of U.S. short-range nuclear missiles, a category in which the Soviets currently hold a 9-to-1 advantage. Thatcher pulled no punches. "A world without nuclear weapons may be a dream," she declared at a state dinner in the Kremlin's richly paneled Hall of Facets. "But you cannot base a sure defense on a dream. A world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us." She defended Washington's Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars, program. Flatly contradicting Moscow's claims, the Prime Minister declared, "We know similar work is being undertaken in the Soviet Union." She then proposed that Washington and Moscow agree to a timetable for SDI research programs and commit themselves to abide by the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, at least for a time.

Gorbachev, though seemingly invigorated by Thatcher's directness, nonetheless responded to her views bluntly. "It is beyond our understanding how one can heap praise on nuclear arms," he said. The Soviet leader dismissed nuclear deterrence as a "safety fuse attached to an explosive device capable of annihilating our civilization." Gorbachev said he saw "no serious obstacles" to an INF agreement with the U.S. Even so, he complained, the West seemed to be asking for a "whole new package of additional conditions and demands" that threatened to bog down U.S.-Soviet INF negotiations.

At the ballet and over two dinners, Thatcher found herself debating not just Gorbachev but also his wife Raisa. Unlike the spouses of most world leaders, the Soviet First Lady has not hesitated to become a full participant in matters of substance. Indeed, her forthrightness, in sharp contrast to the manner of her predecessors, may yet prove troublesome for Gorbachev. Last week the New York Times reported that Raisa is the subject of an unflattering underground videotape that depicts her as a vain and extravagant clotheshorse given to stocking up on jewelry and other boutique luxuries during trips to the West. The evident purpose of the tape: to undermine Gorbachev's campaign for domestic reforms.

Thatcher drew large crowds during her sightseeing expeditions, including visits to an apartment complex in suburban Krylatskoye and a well-stocked supermarket, where the PM purchased a can of herring-like fish fillets called pilchards. The Prime Minister also met with Physicist Andrei Sakharov, the dissident leader who was allowed to return to Moscow four months ago from a seven-year exile in Gorky. Sakharov emphasized the importance of Gorbachev's social reforms to the prospects for world peace. Said he: "A more democratic, more open country is safer for the world as a whole."

But perhaps the high point of the visit was a final 50-minute Thatcher press conference that was broadcast by Soviet TV in its entirety. Peppered with hostile questions from Soviet journalists, the Prime Minister gave far better than she got. She correctly informed viewers that the Soviet Union possesses numerical superiority over the West in intercontinental ballistic missiles, in intermediate-range and shorter-range rockets and in the total number of nuclear warheads -- matters that are never brought up by Soviet leaders. "Don't ignore what you are doing in the Soviet Union," she admonished one of her questioners, who grew more rattled by the moment. "We don't."

Thatcher emerged from her Moscow sojourn more convinced than ever that Gorbachev is "someone I can do business with," her description of him following their first meeting in 1984. Moreover, having spent more time with Gorbachev than any other Europern leader has, she seemed convinced that he is someone with whom the West can do business. That just may be the message Gorbachev wanted her to carry out of their long hours of debate.

With reporting by Christopher Ogden/Moscow