A No-Frills Summit

By Ed Magnuson

Franklin Roosevelt labeled Dec. 7 as a "day which will live in infamy." Last week Ronald Reagan expressed the hope that it will soon be remembered not as the date in 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor but as the "day that we began the path to peace and safety in the world." After a week of bafflingly mixed signals from Moscow, the beleaguered President was able to announce that on Dec. 7 he will finally begin a long-awaited summit conference with Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Washington.

The two leaders not only expect to sign a treaty in Washington that will eliminate their medium- and shorter-range missiles, but hope to lay the groundwork for a much more significant 50% slash in long-range strategic missiles. In the upbeat glow of Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze's quick trip to Washington, the President announced that he hoped to sign an agreement on long-range missiles "during a visit to Moscow next year," possibly in the spring.

The optimism on arms control in the Washington at week's end contrasted sharply with the gloom in Moscow on the previous Friday. At that time Gorbachev startled Secretary of State George Shultz with a sudden declaration that he "felt uncomfortable" about setting a date to meet Reagan in the U.S. He would be much more at ease about a summit, Gorbachev hinted, if Shultz would agree that the U.S. should slow development of the President's cherished space-based Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Shultz would not oblige him, and the summit appeared to be off. But after seeming to brood about the matter for a few days, Gorbachev performed an amazing flip-flop: he dispatched Shevardnadze to Washington with a letter for Reagan that put the plans back in motion. Said a Soviet-affairs expert: "This is a real embarrassment for him. He's had to fly Shevardnadze here just to deliver the mail."

Although Gorbachev belatedly accepted the President's invitation, he seems determined not to be drawn into a weeklong series of White House photo opportunities. The Washington summit will occupy three days -- Dec. 7, 8 and 9 -- and is designed to be a no-frills, hardworking session confined to the capital rather than the far-ranging tour of the U.S. that Reagan had envisioned. That could have been a propaganda disaster for Gorbachev: night after night Soviet television viewers would have been treated to the sight of their leader amid capitalist luxury that sharply contrasted with their own dreary surroundings. Moreover, with no agreement on Star Wars, says Soviet Analyst William Hyland, the "Soviets don't want to invest the political capital of a lengthy summit in this Administration."

The Reagan Administration began lowering expectations before Shevardnadze's arrival. After expressing perhaps too much disappointment at Gorbachev's initial rebuff, Washington shrewdly turned coy. "The point is to get substantive things done, not just to have a summit," said Shultz, noting that an agreement on intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) could be signed without a full-dress meeting of the two heads of state. Still, he was not ready to slam any doors. "There is an invitation open to Mr. Gorbachev," Shultz said. "And when he is ready to accept it, we will be ready to receive him." The next day Shultz injected a bit of pressure, suggesting, "If he waits too long, maybe we won't be ready."

Reagan assumed a similarly nonchalant attitude. "Summits can be useful for leaders and for nations, occasions for frank talk and a bridge for better relations," the President told cadets in a long-scheduled speech at West Point. "But a summit is not a precondition for progress on the agenda at hand." At the same time, Reagan let the Soviets know that he would not permit them to link SDI to either an INF agreement or progress on sharp reductions in long-range strategic missiles. The Soviets, he declared, must "stop holding strategic offensive reductions hostage to measures that would cripple our SDI."

Actually, the U.S. negotiators felt they had made considerable progress in Moscow toward pinning down the final details of an INF agreement. Although some issues remain, mostly involving verification measures to ensure that the missiles are destroyed, Shultz expressed confidence last week that he and his Soviet counterpart can oversee their resolution before the meeting in Washington. Said Shultz: "If it doesn't get done, Mr. Shevardnadze and I are going to be kicked in the rear end very hard by our leaders."

Despite the cheery White House mood, Star Wars still looms as an obstacle to any agreement to reduce the huge arsenals of strategic weapons and a follow-up summit Moscow meeting. Shultz announced last week that he and Shevardnadze had at least agreed on the "concept" that the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty should continue to be observed, for a period of years yet to be determined. Although there is disagreement about whether the ABM treaty permits testing of SDI components in space, both sides concede that no SDI system can be deployed under any interpretation of the treaty. Since the U.S. is far from ready to deploy even a rudimentary space-based defense, a short-term moratorium on deployment would have little practical effect and could offer a way to finesse the issue, at least for a time. Another issue that could impede a strategic weapons treaty is verification. During their meeting in Washington, Shevardnadze and Shultz signed an agreement to focus on the problem.

The Administration's adroit stance, firmly resisting any linkage on SDI while remaining studiously aloof about a summit, dashed any expectation Gorbachev might have had that he could pressure a President weakened by the stock-market crash. "Gorbachev read too much into Washington's eagerness for a summit," contends Dimitri Simes, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Gorbachev got too greedy, too emotional, too grasping. We're seeing the negative side of Gorbachev, but he corrected himself fast." Says Raymond Garthoff, a fellow at the Brookings Institution: "He tried to use leverage to commit the President further." But worldwide criticism of the maneuver and Washington's refusal to yield, he adds, left Gorbachev "with the possibility of no treaty and no summit. He had no choice but to propose another meeting."

Reagan's aides refused to speculate about what was behind the Soviets' bizarre moves last week. "I could give you twelve scenarios of what went through their minds," said a senior official, "and I don't know which one's right." But some observers believe Gorbachev faces fresh resistance at home, and was pushed by his critics into demanding more from the U.S. before agreeing to a summit.

The New York Times featured the he-was-pushed theory in a report that Boris Yeltsin, head of the Communist Party organization in Moscow and a nonvoting member of the powerful 13-man Politburo, had broken a long friendship with Gorbachev and audaciously attacked him in a speech to the party's ruling Central Committee.

Yeltsin denied the story. "I definitely did not say anything like that," he told CBS News. Other Soviet sources confirm that Yeltsin made an impassioned speech at the meeting and offered to resign. But they say his dispute was with Yegor K. Ligachev, the party's second-ranking official. Furthermore, these sources say, the clash concerned not arms control but the pace of bureaucratic reform. The fact that Kremlin officials were willing to discuss the matter with Western reporters was seen by some analysts as a sign that Yeltsin would soon be allowed to quit. At the White House, Reagan aides took delight in the outbreak of leaks among their Kremlin counterparts. "It's wonderful!" said one. "It's almost like being in Washington."

The Gorbachev-in-trouble theorists noted that at the same meeting some hard- liners sharply criticized a draft of a significant address the Soviet leader was to give this Monday to mark the 70th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Marshall Goldman, associate director of Harvard's Russian Research Center, noted that Gorbachev's economic reforms have not yet produced results, and the military is dissatisfied with spending cuts and workers with salary reductions. This restiveness, in Goldman's view, has emboldened some of Gorbachev's foes. Explained Goldman: "Gorbachev's opponents tried to clip his wings a bit. After Shultz turned him down, he was able to show them their idea wouldn't work. That's what produced his incredible flip-flop."

Although the Soviet leader may have gone along with his critics in pressuring Reagan, there was evidence in Moscow that the Soviets realized their stall tactics would not work: visa applications had arrived in the American consulate before U.S. Ambassador Jack Matlock was informed that the Soviets intended to go to Washington. Gorbachev's turnabout may have been less spontaneous than it appeared.

The best explanation for Gorbachev's actions remains the one he gave Shultz: the Soviets are implacably opposed to Star Wars. A rare interview given by Soviet Chief of Staff Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev on the eve of the summit announcement reaffirmed that position. If both sides reduced their long-range missiles by 50%, said Akhromeyev, SDI would be an unacceptable threat to the remaining Soviet rocket forces.

Whatever the various pressures on Gorbachev, it was obvious that he considers progress on arms control important enough to change his mind under the glare of international scrutiny. At the same time, the near collapse of ! the summit was yet another reminder that the U.S.-Soviet relations are on a collision course over SDI. The hard road that Ronald Reagan has traveled to entice Mikhail Gorbachev to Washington next month may be little more than a prelude to the difficulties the President must surmount to get to Moscow.

With reporting by James O. Jackson/Moscow and Bruce van Voorst/Washington