Word: gorbachev
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...paused briefly to exchange chitchat with the help of interpreters and to pose for eager photographers. Later Shultz declared that three hours of private talks with his Soviet counterpart had provided a "good first step" toward the Geneva summit meeting between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev scheduled for Nov. 19 and 20. The comment sent ripples of relief through Helsinki delegates representing the U.S., Canada and every European country except Albania. The 35 delegations had convened in the Finnish capital's modernistic Finlandia Hall to mark the tenth anniversary of the agreements on security and cooperation...
...proposals they put forth were radically different. Responding in part to a Soviet complaint that a recent U.S. underground test of a nuclear device had exceeded the 150-kiloton limit permissible under the 1974 Treaty on the Limitation of Underground Nuclear Weapon Tests, President Reagan, in a letter to Gorbachev, invited the Soviet Union to send experts to monitor the next U.S. test in Nevada. That essentially painless suggestion, similar to an offer Reagan made last year, was intended to show U.S. goodwill in developing arms-control-verification procedures that Washington has long sought...
...Gorbachev had another idea. Within hours of the U.S. announcement, he declared the Soviet Union would launch a five-month moratorium on nuclear testing. It would begin on Aug. 6, the 40th anniversary of the atom-bomb detonation over Hiroshima, and would be extended indefinitely if Washington joined in. The U.S. rejected the offer. For one thing, Shultz noted as he arrived in Helsinki, the Soviets had proclaimed such a unilateral moratorium before, in the late '50s and early '60s, and then had abruptly begun what he described as "the largest nuclear-testing program ever undertaken." Nonetheless, the Gorbachev proposal...
However the Helsinki conversations were described, they amounted to a successful, if initially hesitant, debut for Shevardnadze. The silver-haired, outgoing former Communist Party boss from the southern republic of Georgia had few evident credentials for the Foreign Minister's job beyond close ties with Gorbachev. Shevardnadze's expertise lies in public administration, where he made his mark with boldness, incorruptibility and a flair for public relations during a 20-year career in Georgia as minister of public order and eventually party secretary...
...Europeans caught between the superpowers, any offer to decelerate the arms race is bound to look attractive. In Helsinki, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze proved himself as much a master of public relations as Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev. That was at least partly because Shevardnadze is a new face. But the Soviets helped themselves by holding on-the-record press conferences that received wider play than the background briefings given by U.S. officials...