Word: moratorium
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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...
When the U.S. refused to go along with the Soviets' highly publicized moratorium on nuclear-weapons testing, announced just before the meeting in Helsinki two weeks ago, Administration officials were faced with a propaganda problem they hoped would quickly fade. But even as the two sides prepare for an international nuclear nonproliferation conference in Geneva later this month, the Soviets seem to be deftly augmenting their unexpected public relations advantage. Last week they offered to allow international experts to inspect two of their civilian nuclear-power reactors--a first. Meanwhile, questions continued to be raised, in the U.S. and abroad...
...defuse the issue, U.S. officials are portraying the Soviet moratorium as merely a propaganda maneuver. The Soviets, they say, have just completed an extensive and accelerated series of tests on their most modern intercontinental weapons, while the U.S. has yet to test its own equivalents. A moratorium would thus give them a public relations victory without costing them any military ground. "They don't have any more to do," President Reagan said in a press conference last week. So far this year, however, nine underground explosions have been announced for the U.S. v. five for the Soviets...
Looming on the horizon is November's Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Geneva, where the Soviet offer of a test moratorium could become an important Soviet trump card if the U.S. has made no further moves by then. Already, Reagan is suggesting that he might be amenable to a "permanent moratorium" after the next round of U.S. tests. But his advisers are hedging. Said National Security Council Spokesman Edward Djerejian: "We are not proposing any new initiative...
...issues, but there are many other important ones that are hardly less contentious. For example: chemical weapons, which the U.S. has proposed banning, while the Soviets want to retain existing stockpiles; and nuclear testing, which the Soviets have offered to suspend totally, while the U.S. insists that such a moratorium would be unverifiable. However, should the two sides wish to demonstrate that they can agree on something, there are a few possibilities. They could, for example, issue a strong statement on nuclear nonproliferation, a topic on which they are in rare complete accord. Neither Washington nor Moscow wants...