Looking At A Summit

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

In order to sign a treaty on intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles a summit between President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev will take place. The summit will be held in the fall of 1987.

-- Joint U.S.-Soviet statement issued last week

There have been summits before, of course, but this one will be something special. After nearly six years of tense and frequently stormy on-and-off negotiations, the superpowers that share the awesome ability to blow up the world will have an actual commitment for their leaders to solemnize. So the next summit will not be a mere smile-and-handshake affair, like Geneva in 1985, or an inconclusive wrangle, like Reykjavik last year. Instead, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev intend to sign a pact that will for the first time eliminate a whole class of modern nuclear weapons and, just maybe, begin to turn the U.S. and U.S.S.R. away from their arms race. Where will they meet? In the U.S., it seems clear, undoubtedly beginning in Washington. Exactly when will Gorbachev come calling, and how long will he stay? Details, details, the superpowers appeared to be saying. Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, meeting in Washington last week, refused to get bogged down in the fine points. They agreed to have an Intermediate- Range Nuclear Forces treaty ready for signing at a summit and to push lower- level negotiators to cross the last t's and dot the last i's in the course of the next month or so. That agreement to agree met the condition Gorbachev had imposed ever since Reagan, at Geneva nearly two years ago, invited him to visit the U.S.: he would come only if assured that he and the President could transact some major business.

Nailing down that assurance took 10 1/2 hours of talks between Shultz and Shevardnadze stretching over three days, an unscheduled call by the two on Reagan in the White House Thursday evening, and a cable later that night from the Soviet embassy to the Kremlin seeking Politburo approval. (Gorbachev presumably sent his O.K. from the Black Sea coast, where he is vacationing.) By Friday morning, reporters were summoned to the White House to hear the momentous news.

First, aides handed out a written joint statement announcing an "agreement in principle to conclude a treaty." Negotiating teams in Geneva, said the statement, have been instructed to complete a full draft text for Shultz and Shevardnadze to review when the Secretary visits Moscow next month. "Exact dates" for the summit will be settled then too.

Next, Reagan took the podium in the jammed White House briefing room to congratulate Shultz and Shevardnadze "for their outstanding efforts over the past three days," before turning the proceedings over to Shultz, who looked tired but sounded about as ebullient as the phlegmatic Secretary will ever let himself get. Said Shultz: "Things have changed tremendously in the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, even going back to this time three years ago," when a visit by Shevardnadze's predecessor, Andrei Gromyko, got high-level talks going again after a long suspension. Shevardnadze, meeting the press a few minutes later at the Soviet embassy, sounded positively euphoric. He called the agreement "amazing" and predicted that it would open "a new period" of "detente," a word neither Reagan nor Shultz would use; it has become a bugaboo to American conservatives.

Euphoria is premature; an INF treaty may yet have difficulty winning the two-thirds Senate majority needed for ratification. But there is some reason to think that the deal may set the tone for additional U.S.-Soviet agreements. That process has already begun: Shultz and Shevardnadze concluded two other accords last week. In a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden on Tuesday, at the start of Shevardnadze's visit, they signed a minor but symbolically significant agreement setting up two "nuclear risk-reduction centers." Two days later, they announced an agreement to begin by Dec. 1 "full-scale" negotiations looking toward an eventual ban on nuclear tests (though American officials implied that this is a very long-range goal indeed). The immediate aim will be to work out verification procedures that will allow the U.S. to finally ratify two treaties negotiated long ago that limit the number and size of tests.

Far more important, Shultz and Shevardnadze reported some significant progress on the biggest of all nuclear issues: reducing the arsenals of long- range strategic weapons that the U.S. and Soviet Union aim directly at each other. At Geneva in 1985, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed in principle on a 50% cut, but the two sides have been unable to work out how that cut should be apportioned among the various categories of missiles and warheads. Last week, the Soviets for the first time accepted the American principle of setting subceilings on different categories of warheads (and not just launchers). That does not mean the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks will produce a treaty any time soon. For one thing, the Soviets have not yet met the U.S. desire for extra-deep cuts in heavy, land-based missiles. An even bigger sticking point is Soviet insistence on tying such a pact to restrictions on the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative, which Reagan will not accept. But American officials were surprised and heartened by the zeal Shevardnadze's delegation displayed for negotiating at least the outline of a START treaty; some even discerned Soviet hints of yielding on SDI research. One interpretation is that the Soviets are eager to wrap up all the deals they can while Reagan is still in office, figuring that Archconservative Reagan would be in a better position than any successor to sell agreements to the Senate. On the other hand, the Soviets may be setting the stage for a new effort to prevent SDI deployment by starting a negotiating chain reaction that the next President might be politically unable to stop.

It is the INF treaty, however, that has become the touchstone of whether the U.S. and Soviet Union can summon the political will to begin reversing the arms race. Since 1981, when Reagan first proposed what eventually became known as the zero-zero option (meaning simply dismantling all intermediate-range missiles), there has been a long series of negotiations, interrupted for 16 months by a Soviet walkout that began in 1983. When Shevardnadze's team $ arrived in Washington, the toughest remaining question was what to do about 72 Pershing IA shorter-range missiles, owned by West Germany and equipped with U.S. warheads.

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has promised to destroy the missiles once the U.S. and Soviet weapons are dismantled, but the Soviets wanted this spelled out in the treaty; the U.S. resisted, contending that it had no right to negotiate about German weapons. Also, the Soviets insistently asked what the U.S. would do with the warheads. A way out of the impasse appeared Tuesday night as the two delegations were enjoying a picnic supper (hamburgers, fried chicken, baked beans) on a 65-ft. barge cruising down the Potomac. National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci drew Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh aside. Said Carlucci: "Best I can understand it, we do the same thing with warheads you do." Replied Bessmertnykh: "Yes, that's right."

So it was eventually decided: once the German missiles are dismantled, the warheads will revert to complete American control and be treated the same way as all other warheads covered by the treaty -- that is, they will be taken apart. None of this will be spelled out in the treaty, however, or even in a side letter; the protocol to the treaty will merely contain a vague reference to warheads "which by unilateral decision have been released from cooperative programs." That leaves two points still to be resolved: the timetable for scrapping missiles and warheads, and the method of verifying that they are in fact destroyed. Both sides considered these problems unlikely to hold up completion of a draft treaty.

If they are right, Shultz and Shevardnadze can devote much of their time in Moscow next month to setting the date for a summit and the itinerary for a possible Gorbachev tour of the U.S. American officials think the most probable time will be mid-to-late November. While the summit proper will presumably be held in Washington, it apparently remains undecided whether Gorbachev will want to go anywhere else.

If he does, Reagan will undoubtedly take his visitor to Rancho del Cielo, the President's ranch in the mountains above Santa Barbara, perhaps for Thanksgiving. Reagan would love to show Gorbachev the sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean and inland valleys. (One problem: Can the Soviet leader ride a horse, and would he be willing to try? Nobody in the U.S. professes to know.) Reagan has mused in the past about showing a Soviet leader middle-class American homes, schools, churches, possibly a high-tech factory; the President appears to think the picture of capitalist prosperity would impress even so dedicated a Communist as Gorbachev.

One question that has drawn little attention so far but will loom large over the summit is whether the Senate can be persuaded to ratify an INF treaty. Both sides have tended to assume that a pact acceptable to a President as conservative as Reagan would whistle through easily, but there are already warnings that ratification will be no cinch. If a treaty is signed in November, ratification debates may begin next February, precisely when the primary campaigns in both parties will be approaching fever pitch. The treaty could well come under fire from an odd coalition of Republican conservatives distrustful of any deal with Moscow and Democratic liberals eager to prove they are not soft on the Soviets.

Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd warned last week that the legislators at minimum may attach reservations and understandings that would have to be renegotiated with Moscow. The prospect worries Shevardnadze; he made a point last week of recalling the Soviets' "bitter experience" with the SALT II treaty, which was never ratified and which Reagan has now declared dead.

Winning ratification may take all of Reagan's persuasive power. But an INF treaty, while no panacea, is the essential building block for any further progress. Future hopes for a move away from the ghastly specter of nuclear war will be riding on the Senate debate.

CHART: TEXT NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Chart by Joe Lertola

CAPTION: LET'S MAKE A DEAL

DESCRIPTION: Number of U.S. and Soviet missiles (long-range and short-range) to be included in tentative arms control deal. Color illustration: U.S. and Soviet handshake.

With reporting by David Aikman and Barrett Seaman/Washington