Snuffing A Summit

By John Kohan

George Shultz's visit to Moscow was supposed to pin down one achievement that could serve as a lifeline for Ronald Reagan's foundering presidency: the long- awaited and much heralded visit of Mikhail Gorbachev to the U.S. But the Soviet leader was curiously circumspect as he posed with the Secretary of State last Friday in the ocher-colored St. Catherine Hall of the Kremlin's Great Palace. "I think this will happen," he replied, somewhat evasively, when reporters questioned him about the prospects for a summit. Asked whether he would like to see just Washington or the rest of the country, he again sounded a note of doubt. "I would like to see the country, the whole country," he answered. "Whether I am able to is the question."

At a press conference in Washington the day before, the President, despite all his actor's wiles, could scarcely hide his eagerness for a Gorbachev visit. Indeed, there had been hope that Reagan might be able to open the session -- his first in the White House in seven months -- by announcing that the summit had finally been scheduled. But Shultz had not yet completed his talks; when a reporter raised the subject, Reagan could merely state, "We don't have a word yet or a date yet." Then he went on to muse about how he would like the Soviet leader "to see a great deal of America." They might end up, he said, at his ranch near Santa Barbara. "I've thought it would be kind of nice to invite him up to our 1,500-ft. adobe shack that was built in 1872 and let him see how a capitalist spends his holidays."

But it was not to be. In a move that blindsided the White House, Gorbachev declared that the pending agreement on intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) was not, by itself, enough reason to justify a Washington summit. Unless the U.S. was willing to talk about ways to limit Reagan's cherished Strategic Defense Initiative program, he would prefer to pass up Thanksgiving at the ranch. Barely a year after he had done much the same in Reykjavik, Gorbachev pulled off a bait-and-switch scheme at Reagan's expense, luring him into high- level, high-visibility diplomacy only to shock and infuriate the Administration at the last minute by holding summitry hostage to American concessions on Star Wars.

The announcement was a devastating political blow for Reagan, all but ending his last, best hope for recovering from a string of setbacks that have left him, with 15 months remaining in his term, not just a lame duck but a crippled one. One after another, his major goals for this fall have gone aglimmering: the appointment of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, the hope to win renewed funding for the contras in Nicaragua, and his aim of pushing through a budget plan that would protect defense spending without raising existing taxes or imposing new ones. The stock-market plunge only magnified his new aura of ineffectiveness. Through it all, he and his aides were hoping for a grandly choreographed summit with Gorbachev to salvage a bit of Reagan's public luster.

But the Soviets have made a habit of linking and unlinking progress on arms control to demands for restricting SDI. After relinking the issues in Reykjavik and thereby dooming that meeting to failure, Gorbachev just as suddenly announced last February that he was willing to sign an INF accord independent of any progress on SDI. The Administration was euphoric and tumbled through a set of negotiations that expanded the original INF proposal to include a virtual ban on all medium- and short-range missiles worldwide. But during the summer Soviet officials dropped hints, some of them in interviews with TIME, that the centerpiece for a summit should be "INF plus" rather than "INF only."

SDI remained high on the Kremlin agenda when Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze arrived in Washington last month to work on the details of the INF pact. He brought with him a proposal refining Soviet demands that research and development of Star Wars weapons be restricted. Under the new Soviet plan, defensive technology in five categories -- kinetic kill vehicles, particle and laser beams, electromagnetic weapons, and space-based mirrors -- could be tested anywhere, including in space, as long as they were less powerful than certain agreed-upon levels, or "capacity thresholds." The testing of more powerful systems would be confined to laboratories on the ground.

Shultz's senior arms-control adviser, Paul Nitze, had been pushing a similar plan. He was vigorously opposed by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, an ardent SDI supporter who believes the U.S. should adopt an almost universally disputed "broad interpretation" of the 1972 antiballistic missile pact that permits all forms of Star Wars testing. Aware of Reagan's passionate attachment to SDI, Shultz and National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci were not eager to support Nitze too forcefully.

Shultz did, however, want flexibility to explore a possible compromise on SDI during his Moscow trip. But at a meeting of Reagan's National Security Planning Group, Weinberger "dumped all over the idea that the U.S. should 'show leg' in the talks," according to a participant. As a result, Shultz headed for Moscow with his hands tied.

His arrival was less than auspicious. A freak autumn fog blanketed Moscow's four airports; Shultz, Carlucci and their 110-member traveling party were forced to make the 700-mile journey from Helsinki to the Soviet capital on an overnight train. When they arrived, they knew that even without the unexpected hitch on Star Wars, sticky details on the INF pact still had to be resolved.

While Shultz and Shevardnadze conferred on a range of topics from human rights to tensions in the Persian Gulf, Soviet and American arms-control specialists huddled over disputed phrases within bracketed passages of the 100-page draft INF treaty. Even though West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl had pretty much removed a major obstacle by agreeing to destroy his country's arsenal of 72 aging Pershing IA missiles, the Soviets wanted the German weapons system and its U.S.-controlled warheads mentioned in what the Americans considered to be a bilateral accord. Both sides indicated that a compromise was reached. Other points of contention concerning on-sight verification measures have proved impossible to resolve. Even so, enough progress was made that Shultz did not suspect hopes for a summit would be jeopardized.

Indeed, it was only toward the end of a numbing 4 1/2-hour session with Gorbachev on Friday that Shultz first realized he would be returning empty- handed. The sandbag landed almost as an afterthought, as Shultz and Gorbachev were summing up their discussion. Reports one U.S. participant: "The Secretary asked about how they would characterize the atmosphere, all that routine stuff. Then Gorbachev just indicated that he would not be comfortable going to Washington with things as they were, and that's how they ended up."

Shultz, clearly disappointed, left the Kremlin and went to the secure "bubble" in the U.S. embassy to break the bad news to those working on the INF treaty. He reached Reagan by phone shortly after 9 a.m. Washington time on Friday. As the President left for Camp David, he was bombarded with questions about being spurned by the Soviet leader, and shrugged to indicate that he simply did not know how it would all come out. Gone for the moment were his exuberant self-assurance and unassailable optimism.

Although it seems evident in retrospect that the Soviets had long been planning to demand some SDI concessions as a prerequisite for a summit, their hand was probably helped by Reagan's weakened political condition. In addition, Congress is pushing for its own restrictions on SDI and other weapons programs in the defense budget. The situation was ideal for the Soviets to up the stakes once again.

After the Moscow talks broke up, U.S. officials reiterated their support for SDI. Shultz reaffirmed that the President and the American people were determined to "learn how to defend ourselves against ballistic missiles." As Ambassador Edward Rowny, an arms-control adviser, bluntly put it, "The Soviets are still trying to chivy us on SDI. They haven't got the message that this President feels strongly about strategic defense." Reagan made that clear yet again in an interview with foreign journalists on Friday. "I cannot make that a bargaining chip," he said of SDI.

The drama, however, is not necessarily over. Reagan still wants -- and needs -- a summit. Shultz and Nitze may return to Washington with their hands strengthened for the next round of battles over how much negotiating flexibility they should have. Although Gorbachev's "nyet, not yet" makes it almost impossible to schedule a summit before the end of this year, both sides say they hope something can eventually be worked out.

Nor does the failure to schedule a summit necessarily doom the INF treaty. That is likely to be completed in the next few weeks, and the Soviets have hinted that it could be signed without a full-fledged summit. In addition, Gorbachev offered Shultz what one official called "some interesting sweeteners" on various arms-control issues that could make an eventual treaty on long-range missiles possible -- if some way can be found to finesse the SDI dispute. They include a Soviet offer to lower the "subceiling" limiting the number of warheads on land-based strategic missiles, which would bring the Soviet proposal closer to that of the U.S. Gorbachev also promised that he would unilaterally suspend for one year construction of the controversial Krasnoyarsk radar installation that U.S. officials claim is in violation of the ABM treaty, though he implied that the U.S. ought to do likewise with a NATO radar station in Scotland.

The most intriguing offer from Gorbachev may be yet to come. Shevardnadze noted that the Soviet leader planned to send a personal note to Reagan that might put the summit back on track. When asked if he saw any need for another meeting with the Soviet Foreign Minister, Shultz replied, "I don't think we have anything in particular to meet about." Then he added, "The main thing, I guess, is to keep checking with the mailman to see what he brings."

With reporting by Ricardo Chavira, with Shultz and James O. Jackson/Moscow