Office of the Historian

174. Memorandum From the Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science, and Technology (Bartholomew) to Secretary of State Baker1

Washington, December 7, 1990

SUBJECT

  • START

We met twice today for a total more than 6 hours,2 and will meet tomorrow at 10:00.3 Obukhov led their team; their military reinforcements get here tomorrow. The main points were:

○
PPCM. We pushed the position in your letter4 and they pushed the position in Shev’s letter.5
—
The most interesting development of the day was Obukhov’s offer: If we agree to the PPCM position in Shev’s letter, they would [Page 923] agree not to inspect all heavy bombers, but only those from which long-range ALCMs have been tested. That would take us part way there on the B–2 (we want testing with long-range nuclear ALCMs to trigger inspections).
—
On PPCM per se, neither side budged. I may try out the sweeteners tomorrow.
○
New heavy ICBM silos. They believe the Shev/Yazov letter6 closes this issue on the basis discussed in New York.
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Obukhov made very clear that he had no flexibility to reopen an arrangement worked out by Ministers in New York. He said our persistence was causing a certain bitterness.
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He showed no interest in my proposal to put a provision into the treaty that the Joint Commission would address this issue in the event that a silo became inoperable through accident, or political changes forced relocation of silos.
○
Other issues. We also discussed two technical issues—the SS–N–18 and the throw weight package—without progress to report. Experts will push on these tomorrow.7

As first day’s go, this was about average. Tomorrow I plan to get into ALCMs and bombers, data denial (if we have a position), and return to PPCM.

  1. Source: Department of State, Office of the Under Secretary for Arms Control, International Security Affairs, Lot 05D259, Records of James Timbie, US-Russia START I CFE December 1990. Secret.↩
  2. No memorandum of conversation was found.↩
  3. No memorandum of conversation was found.↩
  4. See Document 166.↩
  5. See Document 168.↩
  6. See Document 173.↩
  7. No memorandum of conversation was found.↩