Word: gorbachev
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When they rejoined their advisers after an hour, the two sides were once again bedeviled by Star Wars. Hoping that he might use the enticement of large cuts in offensive weapons to extract a concession from Reagan on Star Wars, Gorbachev declared, "Something has to be done about SDI before we can get to the subject of reductions." Reagan was not buying. "SDI," he countered, "is long term enough that it ought not to be the thing to make strategic-missile reductions impossible now. Can we afford to let this moment go by when both of us are talking about...
...leaders decided to have their Foreign Ministers break away and assess the prospects for reaching any kind of joint agreement. While Reagan and Gorbachev whiled away the next hour and a half in a sitting room at the Soviet mission, where they sipped tea and Reagan cracked a few jokes,[*] Shultz and Shevardnadze sorted through the unresolved issues. At 5 p.m. they returned to their bosses. Determined to salvage an agreement, Gorbachev rattled off some rapid-fire instructions to his underlings and told them to go back to work and report later that evening. "That's what their...
Through the evening and into the night, the Soviet and American teams worked feverishly to craft mutually acceptable language while Reagan and Gorbachev socialized at a reception thrown by the Swiss government and at a dinner given by the Reagans at their residence, Maison de Saussure. At 10 p.m. the party repaired to the library for coffee, and Reagan and Gorbachev settled on a red sofa, an embroidered cushion between them and their aides huddled around. Shultz quietly advised that negotiations at the staff level were not going well. Then Shultz, so seemingly bland in his public utterances, took...
Reagan, drawn into playing good cop to Shultz's bad, turned to Gorbachev. "This is a first for us," he said. "Our predecessors have not accomplished a helluva lot. Let's you and I work together" at solving the remaining obstacles. The two leaders should not let themselves get bogged down by squabbling aides. "To hell with the rest of them," he snapped. Gorbachev agreed. The two men shook...
Finally, as fine flakes of snow powdered the gray morning sky on Thursday, Reagan and Gorbachev broke their public silence and converged on the drab concrete bunker in Geneva that serves as an international conference center to tell the world what their private fireside summit had produced. Their report was modest. As Gorbachev put it in a brief, formal statement, the talks had failed at "solving of the most important problems concerning the arms race." He cautioned, "If we really want to succeed in something, then both sides are going to have to do an awful lot of work." Nonetheless...