58. Memorandum for the Record1
PARTICIPANTS
- Former President Jimmy Carter
- Frank Carlucci
SUBJECT
- Briefing of President Carter
The main purpose of my visit was to brief President Carter on the Persian Gulf. I went through the actual status of our escorting plan, the vote in the UN and the debate in the Congress.2 President Carter was interested in all the details, particularly the vote in the UN since he had discussed this on his trip with both the Soviets and the Chinese. He seemed mildly surprised to hear that Dick Walters had received some positive signals from the Chinese with regard to the embargo resolution. He voiced no criticism of our decision other than to note that he thought our escorting was rather provocative. I assured him that this was not our intent; we were simply escorting U.S. Flag vessels on the high seas, and our ships represented a threat to no one. He did not pursue the point further.
[Omitted here is discussion unrelated to the Soviet Union.]
Moscow. Carter noted that the Soviets had rolled out the red carpet for him.3 Like everyone else, he found Gorbachev impressive. He [Page 267] thought that Gorbachev was at a crossroad on the arms control issue. He was debating whether it was in his interest to make an agreement with Ronald Reagan or to wait until the next president. I noted that Gorbachev had commented to Gandhi4 that it would be in his interest to deal with Ronald Reagan. Carter thought that that might well reflect his thinking but he still hadn’t fully made up his mind. When I noted that the Soviets were throwing up essentially false obstacles on INF (100 in Asia and the Pershing 1–A’s) Carter did not disagree. In fact he said he told the Soviets this. When he mentioned the 100 in Asia, pointing to the problems that this created for the Japanese and the Chinese, the Soviets responded with a smile, “we don’t want to put all our cards on the table at once.”
I told Carter we had not seen much Glasnost in Soviet foreign policy. The Angolans were refusing to negotiate seriously on Cuban withdrawal, a massive arms shipment had just arrived in Nicaragua and the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan was 20,000 troops larger than when Carter left office. Progress in human rights was little more than a trickle.
Picking up on the latter point, Carter said he had met with refuseniks during his visit. He was more upbeat on the human rights issue than I was but acknowledged that emigration was still far too low. He noted, however, that a number of refuseniks with whom he had met preferred to stay in the USSR.
Carter asked how we might bring about a thaw in US-Soviet relations. I responded that it was very simple. All they needed to do was remove the obstacles to an INF agreement and go ahead with the Summit. At the same time it was important that we both make progress with SALT. This was an agreement that stood on its merits, and we needed to push it. The Soviets had to recognize that SDI was going forward. Once they did and stopped trying to kill it via START, we could negotiate with them on a period of stability. Carter did not argue this point.
[Omitted here is discussion unrelated to the Soviet Union.]