Edward L. Rowny
With the conclusion of Reykjavik
we had crossed a watershed.
Reagan had extricated himself from the quagmire of eliminating all nuclear
weapons and had narrowly avoided a disaster. We were pleased and somewhat
surprised that Gorbachev did not return to the issue. Perhaps he would wait until
he developed a greater skill in dealing with the Western press.
As for Reagan's main objective of pursuing a broad agenda, the results were still
meager. There was not much progress on regional and bilateral issues and human
rights, but there had been a discussion of these issues. Still, there was s o m e hope
that arms control could be moved away from the center of our foreign policy.
Six years of firmness and patience were beginning to pay off. The Soviets had not
only proposed the virtual elimination of intermediate-range forces, but indicated
a willingness to reduce strategic offensive forces by50 percent in a manner entirely
acceptable to us. Only the Soviet artificial linkage of SDI to reductions stood in
the way of agreement.
All in all, Reykjavik proved a success for President Reagan. He was on the right
track in pursuing the objective.
Q ..
Can you tell me about the Washington summit?
A ..
The Washington summit of November 1987, the third summit between Reagan and
Gorbachev, is, for the most part, remembered because the two leaders initialed the
INF treaty. And it is right that it should be remembered, because the INF treaty
marked a watershed in arms control. It eliminated an entire class of ballistic
missiles and specified that the missiles would be destroyed under the eyes of
inspectors.
The final treaty, which had been "agreed in principle" at Reykjavik more than a
year earlier was not achieved easily. The Soviets employed the same delaying
tactics they had used earlier. They employed the eleventh-hour negotiating tactics
of introducing a new item to split us from our allies. In short, they used every
strategm they had used in the past to make things difficult for us and to extract the
maximum advantages for themselves.
Early in 1987, Secretary Schultz traveled to Moscow to try to get things moving.
This meeting went nowhere because we discovered that our new embassy, which
was nearing completion,, had hundreds of bugging devices implanted into the
building's walls and beams. Soviet contractors erecting the building had not
permitted us to inspect it as it was going up. Now, as the building was nearing
completion some of the devices had not been completely covered up and were
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