Word: obukhov
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Meanwhile, there had been a shake-up in the delegation. Kvitsinsky, a specialist on Germany, was transferred to Bonn as Ambassador so he could argue the Soviet case in fluent German against U.S. Envoy Richard Burt. Obukhov moved from INF to START, and his deputy, Lev Masterkov, moved up to be chief INF negotiator. Masterkov had a reputation as an "iron-pants" negotiator of the old school. There was debate among the Americans over whether his appointment meant the Kremlin was indeed ready to move to closure in INF and wanted someone who would get the best possible deal...
...position from the one they had left on the table when they walked out in late 1983. With much self-righteous fanfare, the Soviets slowly meted out "concessions" that they had already made in the past. Maynard Glitman, the chief American negotiator on INF, told his Soviet counterpart, Alexei Obukhov, "You may take six hours or six days or six weeks or six months to get back to where you were in 1983. We don't care. But you'd better know this: when you get back to those original positions, you get no credit for it with...
...Obukhov subjected Glitman to constant harangues. Once Glitman asked a simple question on an issue of fact and in response got a 65-minute filibuster on the perfidy of U.S. policy and the illegitimacy of the American nuclear presence in Europe. After another testy meeting, one American diplomat cracked, "I think these Russian boys miss their liquor, and they're taking...
...other key issue was whether, despite earlier Soviet statements to the contrary, INF might be delinked from an agreement on long-range strategic weapons and Star Wars. Glitman took Obukhov aside and tried to persuade him of what he called the "logic" of a separate deal on INF. "Let's assume," he said to Obukhov, "that we were to agree fully with the position you've taken on INF. We could see reaching an agreement without linkage. Couldn't you?" Obukhov paused, thought hard, then replied that he could indeed see such a possibility. A few days later, after checking...
Shortly afterward Karpov and Obukhov tabled a new INF proposal that at first blush seemed to capitulate on the most critical issue of all. In what a Soviet official in Moscow later recalled as a "momentous sacrifice that left blood on the floor of more than one ministry," the Kremlin proposed its own version of an "interim agreement": the U.S. could keep a handful of the missiles it had deployed in Europe in exchange for a reduction of Soviet SS-20s in range of Europe and a freeze on those in Asia...