193. Telegram From the Secretary of State’s Delegation to the Department of State1
Secto 6017. Subj: April 14 start working session
1. (Secret—Entire text).
2. Summary: In a two-hour, ten-minute April 14 working group meeting on START, Ambassadors Obukhov and Lehman dealt with sublimits, SLCM limits and deployed/non-deployed ballistic missiles. Obukhov resisted sublimits (beyond a fifty percent cut in heavy ICBM’s); called for functionally-related differences and shipboard on-site inspection to distinguish between nuclear- and conventionally-armed SLCM’s (but offered no concrete ideas); and said the Soviets were prepared to address the deployed/non-deployed missile issue in a positive manner. End Summary.
[Page 854]Draft treaty vs. key elements
3. Obukhov noted Shevardnadze’s comment (April 13) that the sides should concentrate their efforts on achieving an LRINF treaty and a key elements agreement covering space and strategic offensive arms. Lehman recalled that Gorbachev had termed strategic arms reductions the “root” of the arms control problem; the U.S. intended to table a draft treaty text next round, and saw no reason the sides could not conclude a START treaty this year. Obukhov asked that the U.S. not exclude the possibility of a key elements agreement.
Sublimits
4. In a discussion which dominated most of the meeting, Obukhov dismissed sublimits as “irrelevant” within the context of a fifty percent reduction of strategic offensive arms. They had not been agreed in Reykjavik. The sides could discuss an eighty to eighty-five percent missile warhead sublimit and a sixty percent sublimit on weapons on any one leg of a side’s triad, but only in the case that each bomb and SRAM were counted as a single weapon within the weapons aggregate. Obukhov stated that the sides should be free to determine their own force structures; the U.S. proposal—even if implementation of reductions were lengthened from five to seven years—still represented an attempt to restructure Soviet strategic forces, according to a U.S. plan that was not consistent with Soviet security.
5. Lehman rejected Obukhov’s assertion that the counting rule for bombs and SRAM’s had made a ballistic missile warhead sublimit irrelevant. The U.S. had accepted the bomber counting rule on the assumption that there would be missile warhead sublimits. This U.S. concern was well-known to the Soviet side; it was, moreover, hard to understand why the USSR now would not accept a concept (missile warhead sublimit) or level (eighty percent) that it had earlier itself proposed. This question was not resolved; there could be no START agreement without sublimits.
6. Lehman rejected the charge that the U.S. had agreed to drop sublimits, and said the Soviet proposal to offer the sublimits in the first place had helped with the climate which resulted in the Reykjavik meeting and the progress there. For Obukhov to suggest that dropping sublimits had been the price for the bomber counting rule was to suggest that net progress had not been made at Reykjavik by the two heads of state. Rather the Soviets’ had given with one hand while taking away with the other. Furthermore, for Obukhov to suggest that the sublimits question had been closed at Reykjavik would imply that the START joint working document seeking to resolve this and other issues was not being worked in good faith by the Soviet side and that the Soviet side was not negotiating seriously here in Moscow.
[Page 855]SLCMs
7. Obukhov conceded that the Soviets had agreed in principle at Reykjavik to limit nuclear-armed SLCM’s only, but the problem was how to distinguish nuclear from conventional systems. The Soviets had thus proposed to treat all SLCM’s as nuclear-armed, to facilitate verification. But they had also suggested that non-nuclear SLCM’s have some functionally-related differences, and that on-site inspection on each sides’ naval vessels would be necessary. These ideas offered grounds for saying that there had been some narrowing of differences on this issue.
8. Lehman responded that the U.S. would not accept conventional SLCM limits. The U.S. was ready to consider the question of limitation of nuclear long-ranged SLCM’s, but didn’t know how such limits could be verified. In response to Lehman’s questioning, Obukhov did not provide any examples of functionally-related observable differences for nuclear vs. conventional SLCM’s.
Deployed/non-deployed missiles
9. Obukhov said the Soviets were prepared to approach the question of the terms “deployed” and “non-deployed” ballistic missiles positively. But the sides would have to agree on what was meant by “deployed” and “non-deployed.”
10. Obukhov and Lehman agreed to report to ministers on their exchanges.
- Source: Department of State, Executive Secretariat, S/S-IRM Records, Memoranda of Conversations Pertaining to United States and USSR Relations, 1981–1990, Lot 93D188, Moscow trip—Memcons 4/12–16/87. Secret; Immediate.↩