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

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

5733.

Geneva, July 3, 1989, 1713Z

SUBJECT

• The first two weeks of START

1. Secret—Entire Text.

2. I have been urged to continue my past practice of periodically sending to key officials in the department my perspectives on developments in Geneva. These should be treated as my personal and informal views and speculations on sensitive issues and thus restricted to a limited audience within the Department.

Atmosphere

3. The atmosphere here is good with both sides settling into a businesslike routine and establishing contacts. The Soviets have sent a strong veteran team in START, and Nazarkin has been pleasant and reasonable thus far. There is, however, no sense on either side that any breakthroughs are imminent. Soviet hopes that our strategic review would have narrowed differences on the big issues have been dashed, while the hopes (or fears) of another Gorbachev spectacular on the part of some on the U.S. side have also not been borne out.

4. Veterans of the Geneva scene (and readers of Playboy) will be reassured to know that security has been tightened a great deal. For example, the NTT delegation has decided that no shoes may be worn in the bubbles unless they have been X-rayed. There was talk of banning pens in the bubbles, but this has not happened yet. The security people have said that all classified material taken to U.S.-Soviet meetings should be double-wrapped. However, they will allow them to be carried in briefcases instead. Briefcases large enough to contain the JDT have not been issued yet.

5. The Soviets clearly came here hoping (but probably not really expecting) that Nazarkin and Burt could get together one-on-one and reach some sort of understanding on the D and S/linkage issues. They now understand this will not happen. The effect will be that they will push these topics up to a higher level. This should not cause any problems here until we are closer to the endgame.

Working Groups

6. The sides had little difficulty agreeing to set up the working groups. The agreed groups and co-chairmen are as follows:

Treaty Text WG	MEDAS/IFFT – (Soviet Co-Chairman probably Masterkov, but there is some confusion on this—WG meets July 5)
Inspection Protocol WG	Riveles – Zharkov
C or E WG	Foley – Kryuchkov
MOU WG	Daniel – Artem’ Yev
Throw-Weight Protocol WG	Davison – Koltunov
Mobile ICBM Verification WG	IFFT – Beketov.

7. In addition, there will be the usual conforming group when needed to conform English and Russian texts. The Soviets have not yet agreed to establish a new working group on our verification/stability proposals. Such a group would probably be headed by Brooks and Masterkov.

8. Ellie Sutter is working very hard in the thankless job of Acting Executive Secretary, so that Jerry Stacy is the only State advisor. Another advisor could be put to good use, since we are now forced to run three of the six working groups with no State participation.

Verification/Stability Proposals

9. A good portion of the first two weeks has been devoted to our V/S proposals, both working on internal papers (some of which were sent to Washington) and selling the ideas to the Soviets. The Soviets have been skeptical and have no instructions yet. They read the various press reports that we had decided to deemphasize and delay START. To suspicious minds in Moscow, the V/S measures fit this theory and are the mechanism which the U.S. has decided to use to cause the delay. Unfortunately, the lack of any apparent progress in U.S. thinking on treaty issues serves as further corroboration of this theory. We are making our best arguments to counteract these suspicions. However, many technical objections are being raised by other agencies here to early progress, so a strong push from the top will be needed to follow through. I think the Soviets will not give a totally negative response, but it is important that we not get bogged down in long negotiations on these ideas. I assume we are looking for relatively quick resolutions. The proposal to notify strategic exercises will be by far the easiest to conclude, while those on telemetry PPM and RV counting would be the most useful. Can we sign agreements on these subjects prior to a resolution of the Krasnoyarsk issue?

10. It is important that the net result of the V/S initiative is to reassure people on the general subject of verification, not feed a verification frenzy. The discussions with the Senate observers, which went quite well, gave no indication that the unrealistic heights to which expectations about verification were raised during the Reagan administration are being brought down to more realistic levels. This must be done if we are to have any hope of success and some of the staffers do seem aware of the problem.

Mobile ICBMs

11. The major new position the Soviets have given us thus far drops the concept of deployment areas for road-mobiles, but accepts our position requiring notifications for any launcher movements out of restricted areas. The latter is a major improvement over their previous position which allowed 30 percent of the road-mobile force out for routine movements with no notification.

12. I do not believe the Soviets would agree to a ban on either road-mobile or rail-mobile systems and a proposal to ban MIRVed mobiles would be a major complication in the negotiations. However, I continue to believe that we can largely have whatever we want in terms of a verification regime. Our leverage in this area now is higher than it is likely to be later, so it is important that we decide soon whether or not to make major changes in the existing verification concept, and that we begin filling in the gaps in our position. The permitted levels of warheads on mobile ICBMs (and perhaps of mobile ICBM launchers as well) will be a difficult issue. There is clearly some fat in the Soviet proposed limits of 1600 and 800, although the recent Soviet proposal that would permit 5 rail garrisons, plus the latest IC estimates regarding SS-25 levels, suggest Soviet plans for a very substantial mobile ICBM force. Getting them down to the levels we are likely to want will be difficult.

13. In the mobiles working group, as well as elsewhere, the Soviets have been giving the most positive signals to date about unique identifiers. They now favor “registration” of all strategic offensive arms, which means they are once again extending a U.S. concept further than we intended it to go. With or without some sort of agreement on this in the V/S context, we should demonstrate our tagging devices and press for clarification of their ideas.

SLCMs

14. As expected, the Soviets have put heavy emphasis on SLCMs here. They have not, however, presented any new ideas on the subject. I suspect their next move on SLCMs will not come until after their experiment with the NDRC in the Black Sea is concluded and the results publicized. Given our emphasis on demonstrations in our proposed V/S measures, a renewed Soviet push for a SLCM verification experiment would not be surprising. I think we need to take seriously the possibility that they will begin to stonewall on START issues of importance to us until some sort of real dialogue on a solution to the SLCM problem begins. They continue to show no interest in our declaratory approach and perhaps we need to push it more aggressively. Unlike linkage, which I believe can be dealt with largely politically as an endgame issue if that is our preference, we may not be able to keep sweeping the SLCM problem under the rug much longer.

Intelligence Tidbits

15. Several points came out in my opening lunch with Roslyakov that seemed to me too sensitive to include in the memcon (START memcon XI-M-002)²:

— He strongly implied that Obukhov had wanted to return to Geneva, but was not allowed to do so because of his involvement in INF. He has said on several occasions that some high-level officials in Moscow were appalled when they realized what had been agreed to in INF. The major problem apparently was the highly intrusive and generally bothersome verification provisions. He had earlier said that general Medvedev, the senior military rep in INF, should have played the same role in START, and implied that he was kept from doing so because of displeasure with what he had agreed to in INF.

— Given that Obukhov could not return, Roslyakov said that Yuli Vorontsov would have been the “best choice” as NST negotiator. There is no dissatisfaction with Vorontsov’s work on the Afghanistan Accords, but he is under a bit of a cloud because of his long association with Dobrynin, Gromyko and Kornienko.

— The attempt to work out a separate agreement on telemetry encryption last fall was “sabotaged” by Karpov in a cable to Dubinin, who did not understand the issue. I conclude from this that there is still interest in Moscow in a separate agreement on telemetry encryption.

Burt

1. Source: Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, Electronic Telegrams, D890570–0303. Secret; Priority.
2. Reference is to telegram 5472 from NST Geneva, May 27, 1989 (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, Electronic Telegrams, D890551–0625)