87. Editorial Note

President Gerald Ford and Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, held a summit in Vladivostok November 23–24, 1974. The strategic arms limitation talks (SALT II) dominated the agenda. The two leaders opened the summit on November 23 at 2:20 p.m. with discussions about SALT II as well as general U.S.-Soviet relations and the Middle East. They met again at 6:15 p.m. to talk exclusively about SALT II. Memoranda of conversation are in the Ford Library, National Security Adviser, Kissinger Discussions on USSR, Middle East, and China, Box 1, USSR Memcons and Reports, November 23–24, 1974, Vladivostok Summit. The memoranda of conversation of all the Vladivostok summit meetings are printed in Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, Volume XVI, Soviet Union, August 1974–December 1976.

Ford and Brezhnev held their final SALT II discussion on November 24 from 10:10 a.m. to 1:40 p.m. The memorandum of conversation is Document 88. After their last meeting, Ford and Brezhnev attended a ceremony in the conference hall at Okeanskaya Sanitorium, where they signed a joint communiqué. The two sides also released a joint statement on the limitation of strategic offensive arms. The full text of these two statements is in Public Papers: Ford, 1974, pages 657–662. Kissinger held a press conference following the ceremony to answers queries about the summit. The transcript of the press confer[Page 381]ence is in Department of State Bulletin, December 23, 1974, pages 898–905.