‘I’m ready to meet Gromyko’

Press, 9 December 1983, Page 6

‘I’m ready to meet Gromyko’

NZPA-Reuter Bonn The American Secretary of State, Mr George Shultz, said yesterday that he would be more than ready to meet the Soviet Foreign Minister Mr Andrei Gromyko, at an East-West disarmament conference in Stockholm next month.

Mr Shultz told a press conference that the United States was ready for “any constructive dialogue” with Moscow and expressed regret over the Soviet walkout at Geneva talks on mediumrange nuclear missiles last month.

He said there were strong arguments in favour of opening next month’s 35nation European disarmament conference at Foreign Ministerial level, an idea that has already been backed by Washington’s N.A.T.O. allies.

“If we are both there, I will be more than ready to meet Gromyko. It depends on whether we (N.A.T.O. Foreign Ministers) decide to go, as I believe our decision will be. It also depends on whether Gromyko goes.” A meeting between Mr Gromyko and Mr Shultz, planned for New York in September, was called off, after the Soviet Union shot

down a South Korean airliner.

. Mr Shultz was speaking after a brief visit and talks with the West German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, and his Foreign Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher.

Asked if N.A.T.O. had slowed its schedule for deployment of Pershing 2 and cruise medium-range missiles in Europe to encourage Moscow back to negotiations, he replied: “Our schedule is decided upon and it remains unaltered.”

The first Pershing 2 missiles arrived in West Germany last month after a Parliamentary vote in favour of deployment and should be operational this month to counter Moscow’s equivalent SS2Os. Stockholm would provide a chance for Mr Shultz to sound out Kremlin reaction to the Pershings which the Soviet Chief of General Staff, Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, described in Moscow on Tuesday as part of an American first-strike plan.