61. Memorandum From the President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs (Scowcroft) to President Nixon 1
Secretary Kissinger asked me to provide you with the following report of his final meeting with General Secretary Brezhnev:2
[Page 238]“The meetings with Brezhnev were completed this evening with a four-hour session in which Brezhnev was genial in mood. We tentatively agreed that your visit would begin June 24 and run about a week. He left details as to possible travel to your wishes though he stressed his preference for the Crimea.
“On SALT Brezhnev, evidently on the basis of a Politburo meeting which produced a six-hour delay in our session today, made a slightly revised proposal. It was that in the context of the Interim Agreement extended to 1980 we could have 1100 SLBM and ICBM MIRVed launchers and they could have 1000. He left the question of subceiling for ICBM’s (or SLBM’s) confused, and apparently was unable to understand the verification problems associated with a simple numerical limit on MIRVed missiles. I told him that as stated the Soviet proposal was not acceptable but that I would give Dobrynin a detailed critique explaining particularly the verification problems that have to be addressed in any MIRV agreement.
[Omitted here is discussion unrelated to SALT II.]
“I suggested that if further exchanges indicate the possibility of reaching a SALT Agreement by the time of the summit, I might return to Moscow in May for further detailed negotiations.”
[Omitted here is discussion unrelated to SALT II.]
- Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Kissinger Office Files, Box 76, Country Files–Europe–USSR, Secretary Kissinger’s Pre-Summit Trip to Moscow, Memcons and Reports, March 24–28, 1974. Secret; Sensitive; Eyes Only. Sent for information.↩
- The memorandum of conversation, March 27, 5:50–9:10 p.m., is ibid. and is printed in full as Document 170 in Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, Vol. XV, Soviet Union, June 1972–August 1974.↩