Word: brezhnevs
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From the moment Henry Kissinger arrived at the Kremlin last week, it was obvious that his visit would not exactly be a love feast. In his latest negotiations with Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev, the Secretary of State was seeking a breakthrough that would end the Soviet involvement in Angola and get the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks moving again. At their first meeting, a jovial and healthy-looking Brezhnev declared: "The main subject is the achievement of a new SALT agreement." When an American reporter asked if Angola would also be discussed, Brezhnev replied with a shrug: "For me there...
Public Putdown. The wisecrack was an extraordinary bit of prenegotiation banter and an embarrassingly public putdown of Kissinger. Still, after eight hours of bargaining with Brezhnev across a felt-topped table and another four hours of talks with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Kissinger left Moscow with something to show for his journey...
American officials said that Kissinger had used "brutal" terms in warning Brezhnev that Soviet backing of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola was endangering détente. The officials refused to say what, if anything, Kissinger extracted from the Soviet leader on the Angola situation. Perhaps significantly, however, they said that the U.S. will watch closely in the coming weeks to see if the Soviet leaders exert pressure on Fidel Castro's Cuba to withdraw any of its 10,000 troops, which have helped the M.P.L.A. gain the upper hand against two U.S.-backed factions...
...Angola situation remained cloudy, a high-ranking U.S. official claimed "a considerable degree of progress" on the SALT talks. Stalled since July, the talks are designed to button up the broad agreement between President Ford and Brezhnev at Vladivostok in November 1974 to limit each side's strategic nuclear weapons to 2,400 long-range bombers and missiles. An unresolved question was how to prevent the Soviets from converting their existing missiles to more powerful models. Details remained secret, but Kissinger and Brezhnev apparently agreed on a way to define "heavy" missiles, thus disposing of that issue...
Possible Compromise. In addition, Kissinger and Brezhnev came up with a possible compromise on the critical question of whether the agreement should apply to two new weapons systems: the U.S. cruise missile and the Soviet Backfire bomber. The Soviets wanted to exempt their bomber, but not the U.S. missiles, from the agreement. To get around this, the U.S. had previously proposed raising the Vladivostok limits to allow both countries to add some of the new weapons to their arsenals. The Soviets rejected this proposal. The new scheme, advanced by Brezhnev, would lower the Vladivostok ceiling by a few hundred...