Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume VI, Soviet Union, October 1986–January 1989

143. Minutes of a National Security Planning Group Meeting¹

Washington, April 15, 1988, 11–11:30 a.m.

SUBJECT

• Preparations for the Moscow Ministerial

PARTICIPANTS

• The President
• The Vice President

• The Vice President’s Office

  • Craig Fuller

• State

  • Secretary George P. Shultz
  • Assistant Secretary Rozanne Ridgway
  • Max Kampelman
  • Paul Nitze
  • Edward Rowny

• Treasury

  • Secretary James Baker

• Defense

  • Secretary Frank Carlucci
  • Robert G. Joseph

• Justice

  • Attorney General Edwin Meese

• Energy

  • William F. Martin

• CIA

  • Director William Webster
  • Robert Gates

• JCS

  • Admiral William Crowe
  • VADM Jonathan Howe

• ACDA

  • Director MG William Burns

• OSTP

  • Director William Graham

• White House

  • Howard Baker
  • Kenneth Duberstein
  • Colin Powell
  • Marlin Fitzwater
  • John Negroponte

• NSC

  • Nelson C. Ledsky
  • Robert Linhard

The President opened the meeting by noting that Secretary Shultz would be off again to Moscow early next week. He suggested jokingly that Secretary Shultz spend a bit more time in Washington, and asked why he was always running off. Secretary Shultz responded that it was not he but Colin Powell who enjoyed Moscow so much.

The President said that he did not expect the meetings in Moscow to be easy. The issues before us remained complex and difficult. We had come a long way together by being patient and keeping a steady grip on our ultimate goals. The President promised to continue on this course until the day he leaves office and to do all he could to hand this course over to his successor. The President then called on Secretary Shultz to provide a preview of the coming Ministerial meeting in Moscow.

Secretary Shultz thanked the President and noted that he had just returned from Geneva where he and Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze had signed the agreement on Afghanistan.² Secretary Shultz said that he had talked for over an hour and half with Shevardnadze about the schedule for their meetings in Moscow next week and about the Moscow Summit. It was Secretary Shultz’s view that the Soviets want these meetings to be successful, and will do all they can to make the programs work. Secretary Shultz thought that, by the nature of the discussion material, one had to proceed next week subject-by-subject in Moscow to see where we might be ready for closure and the recording of progress at the Moscow Summit.

Secretary Shultz observed that next week in Moscow he would go through a careful review of all four items on the U.S.-Soviet agenda. There could well be another Ministerial meeting before the Moscow Summit. This second meeting could occur in mid-May, possibly here in Washington or, if prospects for reaching an arms control agreement seemed reasonably bright, in Geneva.

Secretary Shultz then said he would like to review the issues one-by-one. First came human rights. Both sides now recognized that this had a certain pride of place on our agenda. We have arranged for Ambassador Schifter to participate in a round-table discussion in Moscow³ late next week even before the Ministerial begins. We have put 17 specific hardship cases on the table, and we will press as hard as we can on these, both next week and between then and the Moscow Summit. We will also keep working on the release of prisoners of conscience.

As for emigration, last month the Soviets permitted over 1,000 Jews to leave the USSR. This was the highest monthly total in recent years, but it is not enough and the U.S. will keep the heat on this issue. Our dialogue with the Soviets on human rights issues has improved, and we have expanded our conversations to take Soviet requests into account. But we are aware that dialogue is no substitute for results, and it is results we are after. In addition to the resolution of individual cases, we seek institutional changes, including a change in Soviet laws.

The Soviets as we know are full of excuses. They cite security as one reason for not letting people emigrate. They also point to the lack of family consent in other cases. But we do not take these excuses as answers, and will keep banging away on these issues as hard as we can.

Secretary Shultz described the Vienna CSCE Conference as stalemated because of human rights problems. He said he had raised the Vienna problem directly with Shevardnadze in Geneva. Secretary Shultz reported that because the Soviets have stonewalled on human rights in Vienna, both in words and in performance, we have been unable to conclude the mandate for conventional arms negotiations. Secretary Shultz promised to press hard on this issue in Moscow.

With respect to regional conflicts, Secretary Shultz recalled that our efforts in this area trace back to the President’s UN speech some three years ago.⁴ Since then, we have had almost continuous dialogue with the Soviets at the Assistant Secretary level. Countless discussions have been held on each regional problem in recent months at the Armacost level, and now at the Foreign Ministers level.

Secretary Shultz recalled that his most recent dialogues with Shevardnadze had focused on Afghanistan, and that last September, it was at one of these regional discussions that the Soviets had first suggested to us informally that they would leave Afghanistan by the end of 1988.

Secretary Shultz said that in the coming round of talks, he hoped to make progress on the Iran-Iraq issue. Secretary Shultz confided that he had had some discussion with Shevardnadze on this topic earlier this week in Geneva. The Soviet response has always been “perhaps we can do something next week.” Secretary Shultz said he intended to push the Soviets on a second resolution next week in Moscow.⁵

Another important regional issue was the Middle East peace process. Here, too, we had seen some small progress, and we will continue to keep talking to the Soviets. One encouraging sign was the fact the Soviets had told Arafat recently the PLO should accept the existence of the state of Israel.⁶

Secretary Shultz reported that he had spoken to Shevardnadze in Geneva about stepping up Soviet support for the Ethiopian relief effort. Shevardnadze had agreed to look into this matter. Secretary Shultz said he would pursue the issue of Ethiopia in Moscow along with Angola, Namibia and Cambodia. Perhaps headway could be made on some of these issues. In concluding his presentation on regional matters, Secretary Shultz noted that Soviet troop withdrawals from Afghanistan would begin May 15. This date did not come from the air, but seemed calculated by the Soviets to play into the Moscow Summit.

Secretary Shultz then turned to a discussion of bilateral issues. He said that one important topic was Embassy facilities. Our current Embassy in Moscow would have to be used for five additional years. Only now were we beginning to receive the necessary cooperation from the Soviets for the repairs and renovations that would make continued occupancy of that building possible. In other areas, Secretary Shultz thought that by the time of the Moscow Summit, agreements might be reached in such areas as transportation, basic sciences, fisheries, maritime boundaries, and cultural centers. Each one of these topics was under examination and would be pushed as fast as possible between now and late May.

Secretary Shultz said another important bilateral issue was the establishment of consulates in Kiev and New York. This matter had been decided in principle several years ago, but the idea of establishing a U.S. Consulate in Kiev seemed to take on new importance because of its location in a non-Russian republic. The State Department had no money to establish such a Consulate as a classified post. Instead, it was looking at the possibility of proceeding on an “open basis” where there would be unclassified reporting only. Such reporting could nonetheless be of considerable importance. During the recent demonstrations in Armenia, a good bit of the information we received was from students who happened to be in the area and who called in reports over open telephone lines. Secretary Shultz noted that he would be going to Kiev and to Tbilisi after his talks in Moscow, and then proceed to Brussels for a report to NATO.

Secretary Shultz then raised the issue of arms control and pointed out that our conventional arms control thrust most heavily depended on Vienna. We need to get the Soviets off the dime on CSCE, and especially on the human rights aspects of the CSCE review meeting. If we could do so, we could then get started on the conventional stability talks. We recognized the multilateral character of this issue, but we needed the Soviets to help us get started.

The Soviets wanted a very strong statement on CW at the Summit, and we have been working with them on this. This area is moving along quite well. We have also been working on testing and progress is being made. Secretary Shultz said that we were not going as fast as he would like, but it looked like there will be something for the Summit in this area.

Then Secretary Shultz turned to START and Defense and Space. He noted that the going here was getting very difficult. There were many outstanding issues, and all of them hard. Our problem now was to figure out what to focus on in this environment. It looked like we could focus on the ALCM-counting rule, and on mobiles. There also was the hope to be able to negotiate something to help on SDI deployment, but our discussion this morning was quite discouraging. The Secretary concluded his summary by emphasizing that we need to work on this some more, and turned the meeting over to Colin Powell.

General Powell stressed that, with respect to START, we had three general parts of the problem which we have to worry about. The first part involved those things that we have agreed from the Washington Summit. This included the 6000 limit on overall weapons, the 1600 limit on SNDVs, and the 4900 limit on ICBMs and SLBMs. These issues were basically resolved; we have to work out the details associated with them. The second part involved issues on which the U.S. Government had a view, but where we need to gain Soviet agreement. Examples of these were 3300 limit on ICBMs, agreement on asymmetry on handling the modernization of heavy ICBMs, an ALCM-counting rule that counts ALCM heavy bombers as 10, basic information on the range bans for ALCMs, and the like. These we needed to negotiate with the Soviets and gain their agreement.

The problems in the third basket were the most difficult. These were ones on which we did not have U.S. internal agreement. One category of these was mobiles. Mobiles were especially difficult for two reasons. First, the Congress had not been clear on our own position and on what is likely to be given Congressional funding. Therefore, it was exceptionally hard to make military judgments supporting arms control in the absence of information about your own program. This is an extremely difficult issue to resolve in Washington.

Another issue, continued General Powell, associated with mobiles was verification. The verification regime was extremely hard to develop because we were breaking complex new ground. We’re struggling here, but working. The second major cluster of problems was on verification itself. The issue of detailed verification was very, very tricky. For example, we still had to resolve the fundamentals with respect to suspect-site inspections, perimeter-portal monitoring, tagging, and limits on non-deployed missiles. The third cluster had to do with SLCMs. General Powell said he was not encouraged that we could solve this problem, especially the verification on SLCMs, anytime soon or before the Summit.

Secretary Shultz informed the President that he had told Shevardnadze it’s not going to be possible, in his opinion, to resolve the verification questions satisfactorily before the Summit. There was just too much verification work to be done. Therefore, unless there was a breakthrough in the interim, Secretary Shultz said, that SLCMs were not going to be ready, and also that we would not have closure by the Summit on mobiles. There was a possibility that we would be able to handle the ALCM issue and the heavy ICBM issue, and in addition, we may have to address some secondary issues like BACKFIRE and the like.

General Powell remarked that he would be curious as to whether Secretary Carlucci or the Chairman agreed with all this before moving forward and to talk about Defense and Space. Both Secretary Carlucci and Admiral Crowe responded that they were in complete agreement with Secretary Shultz’s statements. Judge Webster also said he had nothing to add.

General Powell next mentioned that the Defense and Space situation was largely the way the Secretary of State had outlined it. We told the Soviets at the last meeting⁷ that we needed to reduce ambiguity in this area. To do so, we suggested letting sensors “run free,” and we may be close to being able to do something in this area. We’re certainly close to being able to articulate our position without hesitation in this area.

General Powell added that the other idea that we’ve had was loosely called “test range in space.” We were examining this now. He then explained to the President that it was like a column of air that’s identified as a test range, and each side confines its systems to that column in such a manner as to show that it is not a threat to anyone. Unfortunately, we needed more study of how to explain this, how to define it precisely, and what the implications were. He then turned to Secretary Carlucci and Admiral Crowe to ask them if this were correct. Secretary Carlucci responded that this was exactly right. Admiral Crowe addressed his remarks to the President and reiterated that this was a potentially good idea. We were studying it, but there were implications for all of our space programs. Therefore, it could not move further without making sure we’ve taken an absolutely careful look.

General Powell then turned to the topic of the upcoming Summit, and said we would be able to demonstrate that we’ve made progress between the Washington Summit and the Moscow Summit. We also needed to position ourselves so that after the Summit there would be a legacy for future actions. And, finally, when we’re done, if nothing else, that there would be left a firm foundation for the President’s successor so that he could pick up the baton and run with it without missing a beat. We also had to work on the public dimension so that it would be clear to all concerned that we were not holding back, but that we were trying to get a good foundation. As the President has said in the past, it’s important that we do it right, not necessarily that we do it fast. Everyone was working very, very hard. As Admiral Crowe had said often, it was not a matter of applying resources; we just needed time for the resources to produce and gather our position together.

The President summed up the meeting by saying that the discussion confirmed that we were on the right track. He concluded by saying that we need to keep pressure on Moscow for improved performance on human rights and constructive moves on regional conflicts. The meeting then shifted to a discussion of Persian Gulf issues.

1. Source: Reagan Library, Executive Secretariat, NSC: National Security Planning Group (NSPG) Records, NSPG 184. Secret. No drafting information appears on the minutes. The meeting took place in the White House Situation Room.
2. See Document 142.
3. Documentation on Schifter’s conversations with Soviet officials on human rights are scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, vol. XLI, Global Issues II.
4. Reference is to “Address to the 40th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, New York,” October 24, 1985. (Public Papers: Reagan, 1985, Book II, pp. 1285–1290)
5. Documents pertaining to U.S.-Soviet dialogue on this topic are scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, vol. XXI, Iran; Iraq, 1985–1988.
6. Documents pertaining to U.S.-Soviet dialogue on this topic are scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, vol. XIX, Arab-Israeli Dispute.
7. See Document 142.