Word: gorbachev
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...through the yellow brick streets of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, the meeting last week was embarrassingly overdue. The Political Consultative Committee, made up of Communist Party leaders from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Rumania and the Soviet Union, had been expected to gather in January. But Mikhail Gorbachev's predecessor, Konstantin Chernenko, was too ill to travel then, and indeed died only a few weeks later. By contrast, Gorbachev impressed his Warsaw Pact comrades with the vitality and ease of command he has demonstrated in the Soviet Union. When the two days of secret talks at the foot...
...Although Gorbachev, 54, was the youngest man sitting at the round conference table (Bulgaria's President Todor Zhivkov, 74, was the oldest), he was clearly first among equals in a group that exists largely to endorse Moscow's foreign policy and buffer the Soviet Union's western flank. The military bands and effusive bear hugs, however, could not mask the fact that the Sofia summit resulted in little more than Kremlin posturing in advance of Gorbachev's November meeting with Ronald Reagan in Geneva. A 15-page declaration blamed the U.S. for aggravating the arms race and piously declared that...
...contact with the local populations, and sometimes become addicted to drugs or alcohol. A West German newspaper reported that four Soviet soldiers who were on maneuvers in Czechoslovakia last year sold their tank to a tavern owner for two cases of vodka. Such abuses are exactly the kind that Gorbachev has singled out for stern corrective measures in his own country. He is unlikely to ignore them among the Soviet Union's military allies. --By John Moody. Reported by Kenneth W. Banta/Sofia
...cutting to 6,000 the number of "nuclear charges" in their arsenals, but they differ deeply on what warheads and bombs to put in that category. Progress, if any is possible, awaits a decision by Reagan to agree to some limits on his Star Wars defensive shield, or by Gorbachev to shoot for a deal without any such limits. On regional issues (such as Afghanistan and Central America) and human rights, the discussions amount largely to mutual accusations of meddling, subversion, repression...
...documents that laid out the rival positions of each country. No new common ground emerged. "The positions are like black and white," said one American present, "and it is hard to see a shade of gray." It was a disconcerting prelude to Shultz's meeting the next day with Gorbachev...