SUMMIT DEBATE: HOW DID U.S. FARE?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88G01117R000401100002-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 20, 2011
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: October 27, 1986
• Content Type: MEMO

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Summit Debate: How Did U.S. Fare?
The Summit:
New Issues
Reagan Performance
On Arms Is Debated
By LSLIE H. GELB
Special lb The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 ? The dis-
pute betweea President Reagan and
Mikhail S. Gorbachev over what was
said at Reykjavik has raised new ques-
tions about how astutely President
Reagan and his advisers conducted the
negotiations and how they
have characterized them
News to the public.
Analysis The dispute could affect
the President's ability to
? continue dealing credibly
with Moscow on arms control and dam-
age his reputation as a political leader
at home.
The immediate issue is .what he led
the Soviet officials there to believe he
might agree to: Was it simply the
elimination of all intercontinental
ballistic missiles, as he and other top
Administration officials now say, or did
he go further and react favorably to
Mr. Gorbachev's proposal to eliminate
all strategic nuclear arms, as the
Soviet leader and several Administra-
tion officials maintain?
A Dilemma for Reagan
If Mr. Reagan continues to deny that
he agreed to the concept of eliminating
all long-range nuclear weapons, he
risks undercutting his credibility in fu-
ture arms talks with Moscow. Is
But if he admits it, he runs afoul of
most of his own Administration's mili-
tary advice and faces charges of vacil-
lation and incompetence. These are
precisely the accusations he used to
make, and made again today, about
President Carter's handling of Soviet-
American relations.
Today, in remarks prepared for de-
livery to a Republican rally in Okla-
homa City, Mr. Reagan said he had
been under "immense pressure to sign
an agreement, to give up hope for
developing a defense against ballistic
Continued on Page 5, Column 1
Continued From Page 1
- missiles, simply to have a trophy to
; wave."
"I'm proud I was able to stand firm
for a safer, more secure future," he
? said.
After a week of conflicting rendi-
tions, the White House tried to walk a
new line on Thursday. White House
? spokesman Larry Speakes said Mr.
Reagan had discussed the total elimi-
nation of nuclear weapons as .an "ulti-
mate goal," but that the discussion
then ended without an *agreement on
such a principle.
But Administration officials, legisla-
tors, and Eastern bloc diplomats say
they doubt this will settle the questions
about what really happened in Iceland,
and whether Mr. Reagan was prepared
. for the kind of discussions he entered
into. If he was prepared and if he con-
tinues to say that Reykjavik represents
a major arms control breakthrough,
-why did he conclude his meeting there
with Mr. Gorbachev so abruptly and
*why were his aides so grim-faced when
they left that city?
The question of what was agreed
about eliminating nuclear weapons is
, seen here as fundamental to national
security and to perceptions of Mr. Rea-
gan's competence in dealing with Mos-
cow.
? Administration military experts
, have made no secret of their concern
about how a nuclear-free world would
affect the balance of conventional, non-
? nuclear forces. European leaders and
, American diplomats have expressed
equal concern about the uncertain ef-
? fects on foreign policy as well.
But of equal gravity is the fact that
, Mr. Reagan and Secretary of State
George P. Shultz admit having en-
gaged in such negotiations, without
benefit of expert staff analysis. This
concern is amplified by the widening
impression here, backed up by consid-
erable testimony from Administration
officials, that Mr. Reagan might have
actually agreed, or led Mr. Gorbachev
, to believe he had agreed, to the idea of
eliminating all nuclear weapons. ?
This impression has gained force as
Administration officials have, almost
, daily offered different explanations of
? what occurred.
, Most senior Administration officials
continueto assert that Mr. Reagan, Mr.
Shultz and the others were prepared
for the ?kind of wide-ranging, free-
wheeling negotiations that took place in
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for
Reykjavik. But before the meetings,
they all said they expected the bulk of
the talks to focus on medium-range
missiles and perhaps nuclear testing,
issues on which the prospects for for-
mal agreement seemed best.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff more or less
publicly made clear that they were
caught unawares by the Soviet pro-
posals and had never developed a posi-
tion on scrapping all strategic nuclear
weapons.
Nor does the Administration's cur-
rent account square with what many of
the officials in Mr. Reagan's party told
reporters in Iceland. There, the indica-
tions were that Mr. Gorbachev's bold
proposals had surprised them all.
This is supported by accounts from
authoritative diplomatic sources that
the Russians gave no hint before Reyk-
javik of the larger focus that Mr. Gor-
bachev would pursue at the talks.
But regardless of whether Mr. Rea-
gan and his aides were surprised, the
question remains as to what happened
when the four men ? Mr. Reagan, Mr.
Shultz, Mr. Gorbachev and Foreign
Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze ?
were alone in the main room of Hofdi
House., their meeting-place in Reykja-
vik. That encounter can now be recon-
structed to some degree because of a
press guidance document provided
Thursday to The Times, by interviews
with officials who received briefings,
and by ?Soviet accounts:
During their Iceland meetings, staff
experts were being consulted from
time to time and written documents
were being exchanged. But mostly, the
four men were talking alone, and none
of the four can claim to be expert in
arms control. Mr. Reagan, at least,
does rot speak with precision on these
subjects, and Mr. Shultz is said still not
to have mastered the details.
That said, the Soviet leaders had
their American counterparts at a dis-
advantage; they knew they would
make a surprising proposal for 50 per-
cent cuts in all strategic arms, and
they might well have been prepared be-
forehand to go on from there.
The ball started rolling. The Rus-
sians called for 50 percent cuts in
ballistic missiles over five years plus a
10-year ban on deploying space-based
defenses. The Americans countered by
agreeing to this in general terms, then
proposing to go further and eliminate
all ballistic missiles in the succeeding
five years. Then, the Russians in-
creased the bidding by proposing to in-
clude not only ballistic missiles, but
long-range bombers and cruise mis-
siles as well.
At that point, according to the press
guidance, Mr. Reagan "indicated that
elimination of all nuclear weapons had
always been his goal," and the "discus-
sion then went on to" the Antiballistic
Missile Treaty of 1972 and the Strategic
Defense Initiative.
Did Mr. Gorbachev take this for
agreement on the goal of nuclear disar-
mament? Did Mr. Reagan actually go
further and state agreement?
Briefings by Mr. Shultz and other Ad-
ministration officials immediately
after the event were confusin2.
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