Foreign Relations of the United States, 1989–1992, Volume XXXI, START I, 1989–1991

153. Telegram From the Delegation to the Nuclear and Space Talks in Geneva to the Department of State¹

9640.

Geneva, September 11, 1990, 1524Z

SUBJECT

• START: Readjusting Our Sights

1. Secret—Entire Text.

When Will We Finish?

2. While Rick and Lint are in Moscow,² I have the unusual luxury of a few minutes to think and will use the opportunity to jot down a few random ideas and accept the risk that what is going on now in Moscow may make some of them OBE. The pace here has reached the point where a typical day has 5–6 meetings with the Soviets. We are trying to place greater emphasis on small groups focusing on specific issues, rather than the traditional large meetings. This was my idea to some extent, but one result is that it is even more difficult now for your loyal State people to keep an eye on everything. Another is that it is now frequently impossible to get a quorum for an internal U.S. meeting because key people are always off in a meeting with the Soviets. Nevertheless, I would not call this the endgame yet. There are far too many unresolved issues for that. In fact, much of our activity since the summit has resulted in increasing the number of brackets as new and sometimes rather one-sided U.S. positions are tabled, bracketed by the Soviets and then become the subject of difficult and time-consuming meetings. The Burt-Nazarkin meetings are likewise the subject of intense efforts, but are painfully slow in reducing the list of 110 issues.

3. My bottom-line judgment is that it is not realistic to plan to finish this treaty before the end of this year. Last spring, I recommended setting a goal of November, but progress at and following the summit has been nowhere near what was needed to achieve this goal. The delegations will naturally have to meet any deadline our leaders set, but you will not like the results if that deadline is in 1990. Assuming a highly successful series of Foreign Ministers’ meetings this month and next, plus very intense work by the delegations here, I believe our schedule should now be to resolve essentially all the issues by mid-December, break for the holidays, return in January and plan to sign at a summit in March or April. It is important that we not underestimate the time we will need between resolution of issues and the achievement of agreed treaty text and then conforming that text. The Soviets continue to pay lip service to the goal of finishing this year, but their contributions to solving issues are, like ours, not at all consistent with such a schedule. A well-placed Soviet adviser (Sokov) told Peter Young over the weekend that both sides have recently decided at a high level to finish this year and that Moscow will be instructing its delegation here accordingly. We will be alert to see if anything happens to support that claim.

The Good News

4. The latest iterations have brought the sides reasonably close on the last remaining issues related to mobile ICBMs.

— The sides have devoted a lot of high-level effort the last 2 weeks to whipping the MOU into shape. The October 31 deadline for exchanging MOU data was a good idea, since it is forcing both sides to bite these bullets at last.

— Roslyakov told me September 4 that he thinks the Soviet side will drop its reference to the ABM treaty in the preamble.

— Roslyakov also told me September 4 that he thinks the Soviet side will agree to PPCM at SS–24 facilities. I did not discuss the issue of whether it will be first stage production or final assembly, but the expectation here seems to be that the sides will settle on the latter.

— We gave the Soviets our positions on new types and warhead attribution on new types last week. These came out rather well. However, early indications are that the Soviets will have some problems, especially with the 50 default rule.

The Z Package

5. We have spent a lot of time here debating the “Z” package, a proposal for radical simplification of the MOU, as well as the inspection and notification regimes, prepared by Zaytsev and elaborated by Nazarkin in recent weeks. As it has evolved, it apparently is intended to strip out of the treaty virtually all material related to non-deployed systems not subject to numerical limitations. It has been clear for a long time that the Soviets’ provisions on non-deployed ALCMs were devised, not because they actually want to clutter the treaty up with such irrelevant trivia, but as bargaining material to trade in exchange for some of the provisions we have proposed for non-deployed ballistic missiles. They are finally playing this card.

6. I understand that the ungroup recently discussed³ the Z package and more or less rejected it out of hand. Rick told Nazarkin last Friday⁴ before departing for Moscow that we reject the proposal, although the door is left ajar for some simplification of these provisions.

7. The IC people here have been the most strongly opposed to any simplification of the NDM regime. One aspect of the Soviet proposal is that facilities related to NDMs which are not limited numerically—i.e., silo-based ICBMs and SLBMs—would be subject to suspect-site inspections. Thus we could drop by periodically and satisfy ourselves that these facilities were not being used illegally to produce or store non-deployed mobile ICBMs. This sounds reasonable to me and some others here, but the IC fears it would “dilute” the list. Another fear is that the sudden (and in my view unwise) penchant for numerical reciprocity in everything would force us to expand the U.S. list of facilities subject to SSI, which would be a hardship for us.

8. My understanding of the genesis of the relevant parts of the U.S. portion is that they were a bone thrown to OSD when we dropped numerical limits on silo-based ICBMs and SLBMs and that there was little substantive justification. As you know, I have advocated simplifying our position on NDMs for years. In the wake of our rejection of the Z package, there is some feeling here that the solution lies in getting the Soviets to buy our position by agreeing to some sort of “management regime” for ALCMs. I believe this would be moving in the wrong direction—adding additional unnecessary complications when what is needed is simplification. I suggest a solution along the following lines:

— for non-deployed mobile ICBMs no change.

— for non-deployed mobile launchers of ICBMs, no change except drop tagging.

— for non-deployed silo-based ICBMs and SLBMs:

– declare production, storage, repair, etc. facilities. Make these subject to mandatory SSI, but under a separate (small) quota from other facilities on the list.

– drop declarations of the numbers of these missiles.

– drop transit notifications for these missiles.

— for long-range nuclear ALCMs, recognize that these are subject to (non-numerical) constraints in the treaty and accept a provision which makes clear when an ALCM becomes subject to treaty constraints in Article VI—i.e., when it leaves a production facility. In exchange for all the above, the Soviets would drop all provisions on non-deployed ALCMs other than those locational restrictions already agreed in principle.

9. This subject has major implications for several aspects of the treaty and deserves careful attention in Washington.

Kangas

1. Source: Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, Electronic Telegrams, D900839–0349. Secret; Immediate.
2. Burt and Brooks spent September 9–13 in Moscow as part of a delegation led by Bartholomew. No formal memoranda of their conversations with Soviet officials were found. Handwritten notes are in Department of State, Verification, Compliance and Implementation, Lot 06D436, Verification, Compliance and Implementation Subject Files, 1983–2005, JCIC-VII Sept. 90.
3. No minutes were found.
4. September 7.