Talks blacked out

Press, 13 August 1986, Page 10

Talks blacked out

NZPA-Reuter Moscow Top United States and Soviet officials, were meeting again today to continue what Ronald Reagan’s special adviser on arms control, Paul Nitze, called serious exploratory discussions that opened yesterday.

His assessment was given in a one-line statement Issued by the United States Embassy after eight hours of talks at two sessions with Soviet experts at a Government villa outpide Moscow.

United States officials said Mr Nitze and his sixman team would not comment further before briefing Mr Reagan because, in their view, serious negotiations were under way that could be harmed by premature publicity. The team, including Washington’s three negotiators at the Geneva arms talks and an Assistant Secretary of Defence, Richard Perle, had consultations at the United States Embassy.

At the Government villa today they were again facing Moscow’s chief arms negotiator, Viktor Karpov, and a team of civilian and military experts.

Apart from saying that

the talks are to prepare (the Soviet Foreign Minister) Eduard Shevardnadze’s meeting next month with the Secretary of State, Mr George Shultz, in Washington, the official Soviet news media, have also maintained a news blackout. Messrs Shevardnadze and Shultz are trying to set the stage for a second summit meeting between Mr Reagan and the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, due this year according to the understanding they reached at their last meeting at Geneva, in November. Western diplomats said the seven-member delegation represented a spectrum of views in the Reagan Administration, “from those who advocate an arms accord with Moscow to those who have voiced more sceptical attitudes. “But you do not send heavyweights like these to the Soviet Union unless there is some very serious talking going on,” one said. Mr Shultz cautioned last week that the talks might not produce tangible results. “What they can accomplish I don’t know,” be said.

The official Soviet news media have said that a letter Mr Reagan sent to Mr Gorbachev on July 25 does not offer the prospect of a breakthrough on arms control. Newspaper and television commentaries have said the Reagan Administration has deliberately leaked some details of the letter to the American news media to create the impression that the groundwork for a deal has been laid.

The commentaries have dwelt in particular on Mr Reagan’s refusal to abandon the strategic defence initiative, the plan for a space-based anti-missile shield, which is popularly known as “star wars.” But the Soviet news media have been more reticent about American and Soviet medium-range missiles in Europe, prompting some Western diplomats to take the view that that may form the basis of a future superpower arms accord. Some senior Western European politicians have also contended, that an interim accord on medium-range missiles could be possible before the end of this year.