Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume XI, START I

145. Memorandum From the Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on Arms Control Matters (Nitze) to Secretary of State Shultz¹

Washington, August 13, 1986

SUBJECT

• Meeting with Secretary of Defense Weinberger On the Moscow Trip, August 13, 1986

I had an hour-long meeting with Secretary Weinberger. He was assisted by Ikle, Gaffney and Hanmer.

Two principal issues in the discussion related to his interpretation of the President’s letter² versus my reading of what the letter, in fact, says.

Weinberger envisages that the offer immediately to conclude an agreement implies that that agreement will set up a regime beginning immediately which would differ radically from the regime provided for by the ABM Treaty; he thinks, this would promptly open the door to testing and development going beyond that permitted by the current ABM Treaty. I said that, as I read that portion of the President’s letter, the contemplated agreement including “a treaty now” was to deal with the situation which would arise in the event the research program of either side reached a point (after a minimum of five years) at which that side had come to the conclusion that it wished to deploy an advanced SDI system; the contemplated treaty would obligate it to initiate negotiations for an agreement covering such deployment concurrent with an agreed program for the total elimination of ballistic missiles.

I further pointed out that the U.S. space/defense proposal in the letter was made contingent upon a concurrent agreement to begin radical and stabilizing reductions immediately and was not contingent upon either side’s SDI research program being successful; it was for that reason I thought it essential that we concentrate promptly on our preparatory work concerning the agreement on the immediate reductions of offensive missiles and warheads.

There was a similar dispute between the two of us as to what was implied by the President’s letter concerning “interim approach” to INF. He asserted that any such interim approach must include agreement on an end point of zero/zero globally and a step-by-step program to attain that end point; in that context Cap claimed that “interim INF approach” referred to the initial steps of a program, all steps of which would have been agreed upon. I said I interpreted the word “interim” to imply that both sides would have stated an end objective of total elimination of LRINF missiles, but that the “interim approach” would deal only with the initial one or a few stages of reductions without requiring agreement on the specifics of the final step or steps to zero.

Otherwise our meeting was warm and friendly. Weinberger said that he had received a very favorable report from Perle³ on the conduct of the Moscow meeting.

1. Source: Department of State, Lot 90D397, Ambassador Nitze’s Personal Files 1953, 1972–1989, Box 4, 1986 July–Aug. Secret.
2. See footnote 2, Document 139.
3. Not found.