Word: gromyko
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...opened the talks by presenting new American proposals on how to resolve the key remaining technical problem: restrictions on developing new missile systems. This would be part of a three-year protocol that would accompany a SALT II treaty limiting levels of current offensive nuclear systems until 1985. Gromyko had proposed at the ministers' May meeting in Washington that new development be banned for the duration of the treaty, but the U.S. contended, as one delegate put it, "that was a goddam joke." The U.S. wants to maintain its greater technological capacity just as certainly as the Soviets want...
...holes, making them less liable to surprise attack. But Vance, Warnke and other diplomats do not think much of the scheme, saying the Soviets would want the same thing, and it would be hard to detect cheating. As a result, Vance discussed mobile missiles at length with Gromyko but not specifically...
After a recess, with the Americans taking a long lunch in Vance's three-room suite in the Intercontinental Hotel and Gromyko taking a nap in the Soviet mission building, the SALT talks reconvened for Gromyko's three-hour response. Said one American participant: "Listening to Gromyko for an hour is like listening to anyone else for three." Said another: "The meetings [on Wednesday] weren't negative. But the end game gets very complicated when there is not much to finish. There's very little room to maneuver...
When the SALT meeting was adjourned for the day, Vance held a private 15-minute session with Gromyko to deliver Carter's message on Shcharansky (an act considerably undercut that same day by Ambassador Andrew Young's statement that the U.S. has political prisoners). Gromyko offered little satisfaction. As he said when a reporter later asked him about the affair, "That is a question that is within the internal competence of the Soviet Union, and I have no intention of discussing it with anyone, not even you-and I hope you'll not take offense...
...Thursday the scene shifted to the neoclassical 19th century building, once the Lithuanian embassy, that is now the Soviet mission. For more than two hours Vance and Gromyko spoke privately, with only their interpreters, in a small room dominated by an oil portrait of Brezhnev. One issue that remained unresolved was the problem of the Soviets' Backfire bomber, which Moscow says should not be included in the SALT ceilings because it does not have the range at present to attack the U.S. The U.S. argues that it could be adapted for long-range use and wants written restrictions...