307. Notes of a Meeting1
Meeting Participants
- The President, Secretary Shultz, Senator Baker
Personnel—Amb. & ACDA. My views should have special weight.
Next year ahead. Three areas of possible achievement. Others are areas of guarding (?-sp).
- 1)
- USSR & Arms Control
- 2)
- Central America
- 3)
- Middle East
Immediate attention.
Soviet & Arms Control. Preparing for Shevardnadze meeting.2 We vulnerable in absence of movement on START. Without START, INF is naked. Soviets can proliferate strategic weapons. Can hit INF targets with strategic.
Through your discussions in R.3 you have:
Agreement to warheads of 6,000
Probably 4,800 ballistic missiles
Good bomber counting rule
Agreement cut by 1/2 ground based ballistic missiles
Have problem of mobiles to resolve.
Should have additional sublimit, but Crowe opposes SLBM. He would choose 4,800.
[Page 1412]Need find way to address SDI problem if going to get START agreement.
P.—I am in favor of working START, but if we get INF. We immediately go to work on strategic. Having achieved the other—me & Gorbachev get together.
G.S.—That is right. Real breakthroughs come in Summit meetings.
F.C. insists on mandate to change G.S. Moscow positions. P. agrees.
Central America—sense of vacuum. Wright taking over.4 We don’t have strong diplomatic effort. Can’t just be in favor of aid to Contras.
Doing it through ambassadors (three empty posts). I proposed we take a man (Busby).5 Give him rank of ambassador. You have duty of being regional man. Will supplement you with higher level effort (G.S. or F.C.). Busby has stripes of our support. Nobody new. More thrust to negotiation. Early in September by higher level visit.
P.—OK.
G.S.—Middle East. Things we have to do. I want to describe Middle East to you in D.C.
- Source: Reagan Library, Frank Carlucci Files, Secretary Shultz (08/14/1987–11/03/1987) [Meetings with President—Notes]. Secret. Drafted by Carlucci. In his personal diary entry for August 27, the President indicated that he met with several “Nicaraguan Resistance leaders” at the Century Plaza Hotel, adding: “After meeting went up to the Suite with George S., Howard B. & Frank C. A good discussion of arms negotiations, Central America—agreed that Elliot A.’s man Busby should go there as a regional Ambas. Also some planning about Middle East.” (Brinkley, ed., The Reagan Diaries, vol. II, November 1985–January 1989, pp. 767–768)↩
- Reference is to the President’s September 15 meeting with Shevardnadze. The memorandum of conversation is printed in Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, vol. VI, Soviet Union, October 1986–January 1989, Document 67.↩
- Reykjavik.↩
- Presumable reference to Speaker of the House Wright’s role in the Central American peace process. On August 5, the President read a brief statement to reporters indicating that his administration and the joint congressional leadership had agreed to “go forward with a renewed diplomatic initiative in Central America along the lines of the peace plan prepared in cooperation with the Speaker and the joint congressional leadership.” Continuing, the President indicated that he had directed Shultz to transmit the Bipartisan Plan for Peace and Democracy in Nicaragua, also known as the Wright-Reagan Peace Plan, to the five Central American Presidents meeting in Guatemala City beginning August 6. (Public Papers: Reagan, 1987, Book II, p. 916) See also Congress and the Nation, vol. VII, 1985–1988, pp. 210–211. The Wright-Reagan Peace Plan is printed in American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1987, pp. 748–749.↩
- Busby, the Special Negotiator for Central America, was accorded the personal rank of Ambassador on November 6. (Public Papers: Reagan, 1987, Book II, p. 1297–1298)↩