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

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

2219.

Geneva, February 22, 1991, 1653Z

SUBJECT

• START: Another Deadline Missed

1. Secret—Entire Text.

Overall Outlook

2. Things have moved back into the normal hectic schedule following the visit of the ungroup and their Soviet counterparts. As you are well aware, this visit did not produce the breakthroughs we had hoped for and people here are rather discouraged as a result. Obukhov and his group stayed last week and we worked hard on them. We had the impression that the two delegations were staging debates for the education of the Moscow visitors (except Obukhov who needs no such education). If we were successful, these efforts will result in new instructions from Moscow. Obukhov returns this Sunday (February 24), perhaps with some helpful new ideas. Generals Peresypkin and Ladygin will also be here. If Obukhov caves on everything next week, we could have a treaty in March, but this is highly unlikely. The litmus test for near-term progress will be whether he brings enough flexibility to let us solve the heavy bomber/ALCM and size criteria issues quickly.

3. If we do not get these breakthroughs, there is strong sentiment building here for a break, presumably coinciding with Rick’s departure. It would be strongly resisted by the Soviets, but it might sober them up a bit. In any case, the reasons for a break are self-evident given the stalemate on several key issues and the fact that none of us came prepared to stay beyond late February. My own scenario would have a break from roughly mid-March to mid-April. This would allow two months to finish the treaty in time for what I see as the next deadline—a June summit. This is plenty of time to finish if both sides decide they really want to do so.

4. If we are to meet such a goal, it is imperative that both sides stop piling on complications. On our side, I would put into this category the new demands we are making on telemetry. For years, we have had high confidence that we would do just fine if the encryption stopped and there were no encapsulation. I am no expert on this subject, but I can see no real justification for all these new highly intrusive and highly technical requirements. We also do not need more new ideas like “characteristic length” if we really want to see this treaty completed.

Recent Progress

5. The focus on our inability to solve the handful of big issues has probably obscured for Washington the fact that we have been making impressive progress on all the lesser issues all through the treaty documents. The result is that today’s JDT is a great improvement over the December 17 version.

6. Believe it or not, the throw-weight protocol is essentially finished. The inspection protocol is also finally rounding into shape. A year ago, no one would have believed that these two documents would be running ahead of the others, the conversion or elimination protocol is in good shape, as is the definitions annex. Problems related to support equipment and route notifications seem to have been finally resolved.

7. The Ambassadors and JCS have been making a strong push on the heavy bomber/ALCM issues. There is some progress here, but problems remain on OSI and MOU issues in this area. The Soviets continue to be obstinate in insisting on “symmetry,” whether or not it makes sense when viewed against treaty constraints. They will have to yield on this. For our part, we should be more reasonable on pre-inspection movement restrictions at weapon storage areas, inspection rights for weapon storage areas at B–2 bases from EIF, issues related to alert heavy bombers and admitting that an ALCM becomes an ALCM when it leaves its production facility.

8. The sides are starting to engage on the numbers for inspection quotas. We have the impression that the Soviets will emphasize keeping the total number of inspections as low as possible, but have some flexibility on individual quotas for types of inspections. Thus we may need to be ready to make some hard decisions regarding which types of inspections are most important to us.

Recent Problems

9. There has been little progress on the hard issues with which the ungroup grappled. The Soviets have hardened their position on size criteria. A new complication is that they have revealed that the launch assist device for the SS–18 is installed in the SS–18 canister at the Pavlograd plant. This means these huge canisters will be coming out of this plant and, of course, they do not want them inspected.

10. The Soviets are dug in on the 40% rule as it applies to new types of missiles with unconventional front ends. We tabled the language the ungroup considered on no deployment until agreement is reached in the JCIC and they rejected it.

11. There continues to be a serious deadlock on downloading, with no solution in sight. When Obukhov was here, he stressed to me, and later to Rick, that Moscow feels very strongly about this—he sees it as the single most important remaining issue. He stresses two points—the SS–N–18 has a new front end (a stricter condition than the U.S. is willing to accept for its own downloaded missiles), and the 1987 summit statement itself contained a sentence which foresaw that the declared numbers could be changed. On the one hand, they handled the issue in a sleazy way. On the other hand, perhaps we should be viewing the situation in a more factual and less emotional way. The real issue is how can we be sure the SS–N–18 has now and in the future no more than 3 RVs, not what it had in the past. Our confidence on this point could be strengthened by further verification requirements tailored to this system. We might also be able to get the downloading quota tilted in our favor somewhat as compensation. This seems to me preferable to expanding the downloading provisions to accommodate the SS–N–18, which opens the door to phony reductions on both sides and more breakout worries.

12. The Soviets are now claiming that mobile ICBMs need not return to base (or be otherwise accounted for) at the end of an operational dispersal. This is rather troubling and it continues the trend to open the loophole for operational dispersals ever wider. People here tend to wave these problems aside by assuming operational dispersals will never happen, but those given to worst-case analyses could make this look very bad, given that there are no limits on the number or duration of such events. People here are beginning to say, “the treaty is suspended during operational dispersals.” This is not a helpful way to view the situation and perhaps we should take another look at this.

13. A related loophole opened by JCS is “contingency operations” for heavy bombers. The Soviets are pushing hard for notification in advance of such events rather than only telling their inspectors after they have arrived and asked to inspect a base. This seems reasonable to me, since declaring a base uninspectable only after a request has been made to inspect it seems like an unnecessarily suspicious way to proceed.

14. With the passage of time, the September 1 MOU data now being exchanged is looking more and more out of date. Since we are agreed data must be updated every six months after EIF, are we approaching the point at which we need to tell the military on both sides that they will have to update the data?

15. It is perhaps not too early to begin to plan for the JCIC. We are giving it difficult and important tasks beginning right after signature. This must not be viewed as just another commission holding desultory six-week sessions in Geneva and manned by people not deemed essential in Washington. We will need top-flight people thoroughly familiar with the treaty, at least while the JCIC is essentially completing the negotiation of the treaty. We also need to consider how we intend to conduct the “consultations” to which we are committed which lead to START II (and shed some light on the offense-defense relationship?). I would not give this task to the JCIC, but if this is done, it makes this body even more important.

Conclusion

16. We could be 4–6 weeks away from the completion of nine years of work, or we could let it slip away from us. The next few days could be crucial—keep your fingers crossed.

Burt

1. Source: Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, Electronic Telegrams, D910177–0150. Secret; Priority.