Word: gromyko
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...adjectives used in diplomacy are almost as precise in their meaning as equations in physics. Thus when a State Department spokesman described last week's meeting between Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko as "frank and businesslike," his listeners knew that the session may not have been a love feast, but that some progress had been made. At the first high-level dialogue between the two superpowers in twelve months, and the first for the Reagan Administration, Haig and Gromyko soberly spelled out each nation's grievances with a minimum of posturing...
...Haig-Gromyko conference took place in the office of the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Jeane Kirkpatrick, on the eleventh floor of the U.S. Mission in New York. Sitting on green sofas, the two men chatted while photographers clicked away. In a slip of the tongue, Haig noted that he had been reading the Soviet official's "bibliography" and learned that Gromyko had begun his diplomatic career in the U.S. in 1943 as Soviet Ambassador to Washington. Gromyko, 72, corrected the record by observing that he first came to the U.S. in 1939 as a counselor in Moscow...
...pair then talked for nearly three hours with only their interpreters present. Gromyko predictably complained about the Reagan Administration's plans for a massive military buildup and faulted its foggy position on arms control. Taking note of Washington's anti-Soviet harangues, he accused the U.S. of wrecking detente. In answer, Haig cited President Reagan's fervent belief that Moscow is to blame for any chilly relations and attacked the Soviets for continuing to press their own formidable military augmentation. He also ticked off a familiar list of examples of Soviet expansionism: Angola, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, South Yemen...
bombers and Polaris-armed submarines assigned to NATO. But the Americans refused to budge, since the Soviets have not placed any parallel systems of their own on the table. Gromyko and Haig instead drafted a statement that did not specify which weapons would be discussed. Both sides left bilateral issues, such as trade and the possible resumption of SALT talks, for a second get-together scheduled this week...
...Gromyko spoke before the assembly the next day. Evoking memories of the icy rhetoric of the cold war, the Soviet minister caustically attacked U.S. policies around the globe, including its "imperialist interference" in El Salvador. He charged that the U.S. Rapid Deployment Force, designed for quick military action around the world, was "nothing but a policeman's billy club." Noting the contrast between Haig's blandness and Gromyko's bellicosity, French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson quipped that the talks had been given by "Mr. Haig and General Gromyko...