Is our position still, in Geneva, that we are for zero ballistic missiles?

Mr. PERLE. It is.

The CHAIRMAN. So that if the Soviets were to pick that up, that piece of paper, and sign it—"give me the paper, I want to sign"we would go ahead and do that?

Mr. PERLE. We would.

The CHAIRMAN. In spite of what George Shultz said in Chicago the other day?

Mr. PERLE. I read George Shultz' speech in Chicago. It might be a good thing to put it in the record.

The CHAIRMAN. Let's put it in the record.

[The following information was received for the record:]

fense of the NATO alliance, and its worldwide conventional forces, to the degree to which they are based on ships at sea with a capability to project power ashore, and for that reason we were unable to reach agreement with the Soviets following the November 1985 summit.

There was another point on which the Soviets insisted both before and following November 1985, and that was that all nuclear charges, to use the Soviet term, would be counted against whatever ceiling was agreed upon for the number of warheads on both sides. When they talk about nuclear charges, the Soviets include every last air-delivered weapon, gravity bombs and short-range attack missiles, not only would limits on these weapons of the nature the Soviets were suggesting be unverifiable, but would, in view of massive Soviet air defenses, be so prejudicial to the maintenance of our Strategic Air Command that we couldn't accept an agreement on that basis either.

So, between November 1985 and the meeting in Reykjavik there was minimal progress with respect to an agreement on strategic forces although the Soviets shifted their position in June 1986. But on that Saturday morning, Gorbachev renewed the willingness of the Soviet side to explore 50-percent reductions.

At lunch, between the morning and afternoon session, the advisors discussed with the President and came to the conclusion that this was a sufficiently promising opening so that it ought to be explored further in the afternoon. A decision was then made to propose to the Soviet side that as the American side had in Reykjavik its team of experts, and the Soviet side did as well, the experts on both sides should convene that night and attempt to see whether this new opening on 50-percent reductions could be translated into at least the broad outlines of an agreement in START.

There was further discussion in the Saturday afternoon session on strategic forces which did nothing to diminish the impression we had that there was potential for agreement here, although curiously—and contrary to the expectations of many people on Saturday afternoon-the Soviet position on intermediate nuclear forces was rigid and inflexible and held out little promise for an agreement, even though, prior to Reykjavik, the commentators who have since been criticizing the performance of the administration at Reykjavik pronounced with something approaching certainty that INF was the area where the Soviets would be prepared to come to an agreement.

But at the conclusion of the meeting on Saturday, they were taking a very hard position on intermediate nuclear forces, insisting that they would not diminish the number of those forces deployed east of 80 degrees or in the Asian portion of the Soviet Union.

At 8 o'clock in the evening on Saturday, after the Soviet side had agreed to the meeting of experts, the United States and Soviet experts met at Hofdi House where the President and the General Secretary had been meeting earlier in the day, and we began to explore the possibilities of an agreement based on 50-percent reductions. The Soviets presented us with a chart, which enumerated the forces on both sides, absent any mention of dual capable aircraft or so-called forward base systems. It became clear at that point that

one critical obstacle to a START agreement had been, or would be, removed in the course of the discussions that evening.

But the chart and the Soviet policy that it reflected had another fundamental defect that made it difficult for us to reach an agreement. They proposed that in each of the categories of weapons possessed by the two sides other than forward based systems, dual capable aircraft and the like, there should be a 50-percent reduction. As the committee knows, the Soviets possess a significant advantage in almost every category of strategic offensive weapons. They have more submarine-launched ballistic missiles, more submarines for launching them, more land-based ballistic missiles, more ballistic missile throw weight, and so forth.

We said to the Soviet side that we could not accept a reductions program that resulted in unequal ceilings for the two sides. At one point in the discussion Paul Nitze pointed out to Marshal Akhromeyev, who headed the Soviet delegation, that the Congress had spoken definitively on this subject in 1972, when it declared that the United States should not agree to any strategic arms treaty that would limit the United States to a level of intercontinental strategic forces inferior to the level provided for the Soviet Union. And I have to say to you, Mr. Chairman, that if Scoop Jackson was observing those proceedings he was smiling at that point.

The CHAIRMAN. You are referring to the Jackson-Perle amend

ment.

Mr. PERLE. This took us through until 1:30 in the morning, and at 1:30 in the morning we had reached a deadlock on this issue of whether we could conclude an agreement that provided for unequal ceilings. And at that point we suggested, and the Soviet side agreed, to take a recess. And they left the Hofdi House to confer with their leaders. We went and got George Shultz out of bed and discussed the state of play. And after due consideration in a hour and a half, we returned to the Hofdi House at 3 o'clock in the morning to resume the session.

And when the resumed session opened, Marshal Akhromeyev said, “All right, we agree that there should be equal ceilings for both sides," and that was in my judgment a significant and necessary shift in the Soviet position, if there is to be any hope of an agreement on strategic offensive arms, because the sentiment expressed by the Congress in 1972 would be subscribed to today, that we must not accept a level of weapons inferior to the level provided for the Soviet Union.

We then said to the Soviet side, let's turn this broad agreement in principle, 50-percent reductions leading to equal ceilings, into the kind of precise numbers that could constitute eventually the text of an agreement between us. For the next several hours we worked on that issue and produced by 8:30 the following morning the draft that has since been published, an agreed statement between the two sides, in which we agreed to limit to 1,600 the number of strategic nuclear delivery vehicles on each side. Strategic nuclear delivery vehicles consist of sea-based and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and heavy bombers.

We also agreed to limit to 6,000 the total number of warheads carried by those means of delivery, counting long-range airlaunched cruise missiles as a single warhead, and we further

agreed that bombers that carry gravity bombs or SRAMs would be counted in the overall ceiling of 1,600 nuclear delivery vehicles, and for each such bomber, we would count one against the total of warheads permitted on each side. This made it clear that the Soviets were accepting at long last the American position that we could not and would not count gravity bombs and SRAMs in their full numbers in recognition of the significant advantage the Soviets enjoy with respect to air defense.

The CHAIRMAN. That was a compromise position.

Mr. PERLE. It was a compromise position.

The CHAIRMAN. Because our position was you don't count them at all, theirs was you count them each as one, and the compromise is we would count the plane itself, no matter how many gravity bombs and SRAMs, as one and then each ALCM as one.

Mr. PERLE. That is correct. It was a compromise, and I think it was a useful and productive compromise.

In the course of the evening, we got into other issues as well, although with less success and certainly less definitive success. We had a long discussion with respect to sea-launched cruise missiles, long-range sea-launched cruise missiles. We finally agreed to language according to which the sides agreed to find a solution to the problem of limiting long-range sea-launched cruise missiles, and we said to the Soviet side that we could not imagine a solution to the problem of limiting long-range sea-launched cruise missiles, because of the impossibility of verifying limits on those weapons, and we have again and again asked the Soviets to propose how they would go about verifying those limits.

So while we were prepared to agree to find a solution, we put them on notice that the only solution we could imagine, and we invited them to come forward with ideas, was that we would be prepared to declare the number of long-range sea-launched cruise missiles in the possession of the United States, and they could come to the House Armed Services Committee and its documentation and in other ways take advantage of the openness of our society in seeing themselves that the number we claimed was, in fact, the number we had.

It is not clear how we would gain confidence that the Soviets were abiding by a limit on sea-launched cruise missiles, but in any case it was agreed that the solution to the sea-launched cruise missile issue would be found outside the numbers agreed to, the 1,600 and the 6,000.

Also, in the course of the evening, we had an extensive discussion of sublimits with respect to the many categories of weapons that would come under the 1,600 and the 6,000, and we made it very plain to the Soviet side that we intended to press in Geneva for the inclusion of some sublimits that we believe are necessary in order to shift the strategic balance in a more stable direction.

Now there has been some discussion since Reykjavik about this question of sublimits, so I want to be very clear about what was agreed to. We were unable between 8 o'clock at night and 6:30 the next morning to reach agreement on sublimits, but those sublimits have been and continue to be a part of the American negotiating position in Geneva. At various stages the Soviets have acknowledged in the past the legitimacy of sublimits, and they have even

proposed sublimits of their own, and in some cases accepted sublimits proposed by the United States.

When it became clear, and this must have been late in the session, that we would not be able to come to closure on the issue of sublimits, an exchange took place between Marshal Akhromeyev and Ambassador Nitze in which Ambassador Nitze said that we reserve the right to continue to press sublimits in the negotiations in Geneva, and he asked Marshal Akhromeyev for a confirmation that we had that right and would be free to avail ourselves of it. Marshal Akhromeyev agreed that, of course, we had the right to continue to press sublimits. So those who may have read the documents that emerged at 6:30 in the morning and noticed the absence of sublimits, should know and understand that we are pressing sublimits, and the Soviets knew we would and agreed that we had every right to do so.

We also discussed the nuclear testing issue in that all-night session, and in fact nuclear testing had been discussed between the leaders on Saturday, but we were unable to reach a conclusion. The United States took the position that the first priority with respect to nuclear testing was to improve the verification arrangements under which the existing threshold test ban is now operating.

The Soviets have been pressing for a commitment to a comprehensive test ban, and they wish to characterize any negotiations that might take place as negotiations toward or leading to a comprehensive test ban, and we are not prepared to take that, because we believe that the testing of nuclear weapons, so long as we maintain a large arsenal of nuclear weapons, is vital to their safety, security and survivability; and if the committee is interested, I would be happy later to go into more detail on this issue of nuclear testing, because as we both know, it is an issue about which the Congress has found occasion to express itself in the past, and I rather suspect you will be tempted to do so again.

This took us through until 6:30 in the morning, at which point, or shortly thereafter, we convened to meet with the President and Secretary Shultz, Admiral Poindexter and others who accompanied the President to Reykjavik, and we had a discussion in rather small, cramped quarters; the security facility in our embassy in Reykjavik, a large number of people in a very small space. But we had a good and thorough discussion of what had transpired in the course of the evening, and I must say the President was pleased with the progress that had been made in clearing away issues that had stood in the way of more significant progress in Geneva on the subject of strategic arms. And I hope the committee will agree that that was a good night's work, that the result was a promising one, and, by the way, that result and other results from Reykjavik will not be swept away simply because it was not possible to reach agreement on that occasion.

You don't agree to 6,000 in Reykjavik and then insist on 7,000 later. I think the progress that has been made provides the starting point for continuing the ongoing negotiations, if we are patient enough to translate that progress into an ultimate agreement.

In any case, the discussion took place with the President on Sunday morning, and he returned shortly thereafter to the Hofdi House for the third and what was intended to be final session with