18. Memorandum of Conversation1
The Secretary’s May 10–11 Visit to Moscow: Third Small-Group Meeting with Shevardnadze
SUBJECTS
- Arms Control: START (continued), Nuclear Testing, Chemical Weapons, Ballistic Missile Proliferation, CFE/CSBMs, Military Glasnost, Strategic CBMs.
PARTICIPANTS
U.S.
- James A. Baker III, Secretary of State
- Jack F. Matlock, U.S. Ambassador to the USSR
- Robert Gates, Deputy National Security Advisor to President
- Reginald Bartholomew, Under Secretary of State, T
- Robert Zoellick, Counselor, Department of State
- Rozanne L. Ridgway, Assistant Secretary of State, EUR
- Margaret D. Tutwiler, Assistant Secretary of State, PA
- Richard Burt, Head of Delegation, Nuclear and Space Talks
- Alexander Vershbow, Director, EUR/SOV (notetaker)
- William Hopkins, Peter Afanasenko interpreters
USSR
- Eduard A. Shevardnadze, Minister of Foreign Affairs
- Aleksandr A. Bessmertnykh, 1st Deputy Foreign Minister
- Viktor Karpov, Deputy Foreign Minister
- Yuriy V. Dubinin, USSR Ambassador to the U.S.
- Sergey Tarasenko, Special Assistant to the Minister
- Aleksey A. Obukhov, Head, USA Administration, MFA
- Georgiy Mamedov, Deputy Director, USA Administration (notetaker)
- Yevgeniy Gusarev, USA Administration (notetaker)
- Pavel Palazhchenko, interpreter
[Omitted here are discussions not related to START.]
Shevardnadze said he would like now to continue the work begun the previous day on disarmament issues. He had until 9:30, at which time he would have to leave for the Kremlin in order to arrive ahead of the Secretary for his meeting with Gorbachev. It would not likely be possible to cover every arms control subject in detail, but he asked that the Secretary raise whatever items he believed most important.
[Page 69]START: Depressed-Trajectory SLBMs, SLCMs
The Secretary said he wanted first to comment on an item Shevardnadze had put on the table at the end of their previous meeting, namely, limits on depressed-trajectory SLBMs. This subject had received a fair amount of attention recently in the United States and we were examining it as well. We thought it should more properly be called short-time-of-flight missiles. We saw this as a complex problem and were investigating whether there were meaningful limits that could be effectively verified. Until then we should keep the item on the agenda for future discussions.
Shevardnadze said this was fine; he agreed. He had raised the idea in the same sense.
The Secretary said Shevardnadze had also mentioned sea-launched cruise missiles. Throughout START the U.S. believed that a sound treaty could be achieved without formal limits on SLCMs. SLCMs posed extraordinary verification problems. They had long flight times and thus were not suitable for a first strike. Unlike other strategic systems SLCMs were located on naval platforms with non-strategic missions. As a maritime power, the U.S. needed non-strategic SLCMs. We recognized that at the Washington summit we had agreed to see whether numerical ceilings could be developed and verified. We had looked at Soviet proposals, however, and found them technically unworkable. We had not found any other technically workable solutions that did not conflict with our naval operational requirements. Therefore we continued to favor a declaratory approach. We realized this posed a problem for the Soviet side and would continue to study the problem internally. We would be glad to consider any new Soviet proposals that might be presented. In short, we recognized that this remained a major difference between us in START, but we could not go beyond this at the current meeting.
Shevardnadze replied that in the course of the negotiations the U.S. would need to take a closer look at the verification measures suggested by the Soviets. They believed that verification was quite feasible and the U.S. needed to take a closer substantive look.
[Omitted here are discussions not related to START.]
- Source: Department of State, Executive Secretariat, S/S-IRM Records, Lot 93D187, Secretary James A. Baker III’s Classified Papers, JAB Papers May 1989. Secret; Nodis. Drafted by Vershbow; cleared by Ridgway, Bartholomew, Ross, Zoellick, and Burt. The meeting took place in the MFA Guest House. The full memorandum of conversation is scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1989–1992, vol. III, Soviet Union, Russia, and Post-Soviet States: High-Level Contacts. Following the meeting, Baker met with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze in the Kremlin alone with their interpreters from 10–10:55 a.m. The memorandum of conversation is scheduled for publication in ibid.↩