Geneva Summit: Gorbachev expects little from Reagan

Press, 30 August 1985, Page 17

Geneva Summit: Gorbachev expects little from Reagan

From

MARK FRANKLAND,

in Moscow

The Soviet side has started preparations for the Geneva summit meeting in November between General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan. Moscow’s expectations of what those talks might achieve are, however, prudently limited. It is hard to find anyone in Moscow who thinks the American side will easily agree to what the Russians propose. The Soviet moratorium on nuclear testing reflects the Soviet belief that the Americans have to be brought under pressure. The test moratorium is a tactical strike in thd over-all Soviet strategy against

Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative. The aim is to play on doubts in the United States and the Western Alliance about “Star Wars,” and to rally world opinion as much as possible to echo those doubts and disapproval. The test moratorium allows the often vague fears about an S.D.I. programme, that may not take concrete shape for years, to concentrate on something far more easily grasped. The American nuclear weapons’ laboratories’ dislike of any moratorium is well known. The link between future United States nuclear tests and preparations for “Star Wars” has-been established.

By pressing the case for a moratorium now, the Soviets put Washington on the diplomatic defensive and arm its critics at home and within the alliance with a straightforward and attractive suggestion — stop testing. It is unlikely, though, that the Soviet Government believes it will be able to pressure the American President into a more acceptable mood by November. And there are already hints of what they will do if Geneva ends with no agreement on the major matters dividing the super-Powers. Alexander Bovin, a foreign affairs commentator jn “Izvestia,” whose articles are reSd in Moscow

with particular attention, has just stressed that Soviet foreign policy has more to it than just United States-Soviet relations. This is “far from the real state of affairs,” he writes. “We, naturally, take into account the significance that relations between the U.S.S.R. and U.S.A, have both for our two countries and the international community as a whole. But the foreign policy interests of the Soviet Union embrace an incomparably wider circle of problems and directions.” V

This is a theme that has already been sounded in the speeches of Gorbachev himself. Bovin goes on to flesh it out. Above all, he writes, there is Eruope where, in spite of difficulties, “factors of peace, co-opera-tion, undoubtedly outweigh factors of war, of confrontation.” It is not, according to Bovin, that the Soviet Union hopes to split Western Europe from the United States, to make them quarrel (“They quarrel anyhow without us”). What the Soviet Union wants is for “our

European neighbours to use their transatlantic influence to raise the political culture of their ally across the ocean.” A passage from the speech by the French Foreign Minister, Roland Dumas, at the Helsinki tenth anniversary conference is quoted with approval. Dumas talked of Europe’s unwillingness to let matters concerning its own security become a monopoly for discussion by the super-Powers “however desirable meetings between them might be.” The Soviet commentator agrees, or rather he agrees with Europe I having a louder voice in matters of □ disarmament, which may not be

quite the same thing. The Soviet Union, the “Izvestia” journalist continues, also has extensive interests in Asia. An improvement in the atmosphere in Asia and in Europe, he concludes, would “sooner or later facilitate the return of Soviet-American relations to a normal course. We, it goes without saying, prefer a more direct, shorter route, and that is why we agreed to go to Geneva. But not everything depends on us.” An unspoken thought behind this article may be that President Reagan is not, and never will be in the Ihree years remaining to him in we White House, a “serious”

partner for talks in Moscow’s eves. The Russians feel they have been badly burnt by the Reagan Administration. Their new leader is impatient to put East-West relations on a more predictable footing, chiefly, many suppose here, because only then can he safely give the country’s well-recognised internal problems the attention they deserve. If the Russians decide in November that there is nothing to be done with the Reagan Administration, they will not stay idle until a new President is elected. Their energies will be directed towards Europe and Asia. Copyright—London Observer Service.