Diplomacy an Aftertaste of Regret

By Michael S. Serrill

It was almost as if the Soviets and Americans who met last week in Vienna to pick up where they had left off on arms control at the Iceland summit also decided to mimic the outcome at Reykjavik. Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and Secretary of State George Shultz started the talks with friendly smiles and expressions of hope. Then, two days later, they emerged frustrated, each blaming the other for their failure to break the Reykjavik stalemate. Before Shevardnadze boarded a plane back to Moscow, he said the talks had left him with a "bitter taste." Declared Secretary Shultz: "I can't say this meeting moved arms control forward in any significant way, and I regret this."

Once more the talks broke down on the question of the future of the Reagan Administration's Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars program. The Soviets insisted that progress on all other nuclear arms depended on restricting the space-based defense system; the U.S. refused to trade away any part of the Star Wars program in exchange for new arms deals. Again, said Shultz, "it seemed that their objective was to try to cripple SDI, and it is not going to work." Though both sides emphasized that talks would go on, the failure at Vienna reduces the prospect of an arms agreement in the near future.

Any chance of a breakthrough dimmed the moment the Soviet team arrived in Vienna. Shevardnadze was not accompanied by the full delegation that had negotiated deep into the night in Iceland. Most conspicuously absent: Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, Soviet Chief of Staff and leader of the Reykjavik arms- control team. The first meeting between Shultz and Shevardnadze lasted three hours. From the beginning, the Soviets made it clear that they were not interested in the U.S. goal of defining some areas of agreement, perhaps including the reduction of intermediate-range nuclear weapons, or disagreement. Instead, Soviet negotiators hammered away at just one subject: SDI. Senior officials on both sides sat down later that evening to try to draft a joint communique. But there was no all-night session this time. Three hours into the staff meeting, it became clear that neither side was going to retreat from its position on SDI, and the session broke up.

Shultz and Shevardnadze met again Thursday morning for two hours, but by that time no one expected a positive result. The U.S. team became convinced that the Soviets had come to Vienna to stonewall. "It was clear their , instructions were not to make substantive progress," snapped a senior American official. Said another: "They just wanted to increase the public relations pressure on SDI."

The U.S. went to Vienna hoping to "clarify and confirm," in writing, the agreements reached at the Reykjavik summit. "We wanted to codify the progress made and nail down the remaining problems," said Shultz. The Secretary presented Shevardnadze with the specific wording of U.S. proposals for sharp cutbacks in intermediate-range missiles and their elimination in Europe, a 50% reduction in strategic missiles, a phase-out of underground nuclear testing through a step-by-step process, and a ten-year renunciation of the U.S.'s right to withdraw from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty restricting space-based defenses. "We asked them to reconfirm their statements at Reykjavik," said a U.S. participant. "But they wouldn't even do that. We just went round and round."

The Soviets, for their part, claimed that the U.S.'s proposals were, as Shevardnadze put it, a "mixed bag of old mothballed views and approaches. One cannot avoid the impression that our partners wish to forget Reykjavik as soon as possible." The Soviets charged that the U.S. has "backtracked" on its Iceland commitments, and this touched an especially raw American nerve. Ever since the October summit, the Kremlin has maintained that President Reagan pledged himself to the elimination of all nuclear weapons within ten years. Although U.S. officials denied any backpedaling, at Vienna they issued a complicated "clarification" maintaining that while the President does indeed hope for a nuclear-free world one day, he believes it must be accompanied by a "safer" balance of power that includes sharp reductions in conventional arms and chemical weapons. "The question at issue is what kind of world there would have to be to make the elimination of all nuclear weapons safe," said a U.S. official. "That can't be given a date."

The U.S. statement was welcomed by some West European governments, which fear that the dismantling of the nuclear umbrella in Europe would leave them at the mercy of superior Warsaw Pact conventional forces. Both French Foreign Minister Jean-Bernard Raimond and British Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe addressed the issue last week. Said Howe: "Nuclear disarmament cannot take place in a vacuum while the Continent lives under the shadow of the Soviet Union's superiority in conventional arms and chemical weapons." Declared Raimond: "The human race has no vision of any alternative to nuclear deterrence. It has served the cause of peace well and should therefore continue to guarantee the security of our continent."

For the moment, the West Europeans' interests are well protected by the U.S.-Soviet deadlock on Star Wars. Moscow seems intent on mining what it can from what it regards as a propaganda victory at Reykjavik. U.S. experts are unsure how long it will be before the Soviets are again ready for serious bargaining. "We have to be patient," counseled Shultz. "There is a rhythm and a pace to these negotiations that can't be forced by either party." The Vienna talks, despite the hopes of U.S. officials, signally failed to speed that process.

With reporting by Johanna McGeary/Vienna, with other bureaus