await an equally constructive response at the negotiating table from the Soviet Union and the other members of the Warsaw Pact. Public statements alone are not enough.

Adequate verification measures are the key to progress in all the present negotiations and essential for building trust and openness. Any agreement should enhance confidence of compliance and strengthen the existing treaty regime. We are prepared to accept comprehensive verification measures, on a fully reciprocal basis, including systematic on-site inspections.

But the development of peaceful and realistic East-West relations requires more than arms control. The human dimension remains crucial: this embraces respect for human rights and encouragement of individual contacts. Moreover, a more co-operative East-West relationship, including political dialogue, trade, and cultural exchanges, in which all states participate on equal terms, is needed. We reaffirm the importance each of us attaches to the CSCE process in all its aspects. At Stockholm we are pressing for agreement on a substantial set of confidence and security building measures by September 1986. We are determined to further the CSCE process at the Vienna CSCE Follow-up meeting in November, which should be opened at a political level.

We underline the importance of the continued observance of the Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin' and, particularly in view of the current situation, of maintaining freedom of circulation in the city.

Terrorism is a serious concern to us all. It poses an intolerable threat to our citizens and to the conduct of normal international relations. We are resolved to work together to eradicate this scourge. We urge closer international cooperation in this effort.

The purpose of our Alliance is to enable our peoples to live in peace and freedom, free from any threat to their security. We seek a productive East-West dialogue. This will enhance stability in our relations with the members of the Warsaw Pact. We call upon the Soviet Union and the other Eastern European countries to join us in this endeavour.

88. Statement by the Ministerial Meeting of the North Atlantic Council: Conventional Arms Control, May 30, 19861

-Within the Alliance, we cherish the ideal that all the peoples of Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, should live in peace, freedom and security. To achieve that ideal, bold new steps are required in the field of conventional arms control.

-Our objective is the strengthening of stability and security in the whole of Europe, through increased openness and the establishment of a verifiable, comprehensive and stable balance of conventional forces at lower levels.

224 UST 283, TIAS 7551.

'NATO Review, vol. 34, No. 3 (June 1986), p. 30. The statement was made in Halifax, Canada, at the end of a two-day meeting.

-To work urgently towards the achievement of this objective we have decided to set up a high level task force on conventional arms control. -It will build on the Western proposals at the CDE conference in Stockholm and at the MBFR negotiations in Vienna, in both of which participating Allied countries are determined to achieve early agreement. -It will take account of Mr. Gorbachev's statement of 18th April expressing, in particular, Soviet readiness to pursue conventional force reductions from the Atlantic to the Urals.2

-An interim report will be presented to the Council in October, and a final report will be discussed at our next meeting in December. -Our aim is a radical improvement in East-West relations in which more confidence, greater openness, and increased security will benefit all.

89. News Conference Remarks by Secretary of State Shultz: Ministerial Meeting of the North Atlantic Council and U.S. Policy on the SALT Agreements [Extract], May 30, 19861

Q. Is there any truth to the reports in the U.S. press today suggesting a rift in the alliance following the decision of the President announced Tuesday concerning SALT II?? Are those headlines accurate?

A. No.

Q. Could you say whether any of the allies supported the idea of a U.S. breakout from SALT II?

A. It's not so much a question of a breakout. I don't think it is being described properly. What we are talking about here is a shift of gears from a form of restraint under a treaty that was never ratified and was being violated, and, for that matter, has become increasingly obsolete, since its most fundamental unit of account, launchers-not exclusive unit of account, but fundamental unit of account-is not the right one. The right units of account are warheads and the capacity to deliver that power. You have a form of restraint that has been becoming more and more obsolete, that is unratified, that is being violated.

The President is saying, let us shift away from that to a form of restraint that looks at behavior by the Soviet Union and looks at the responsibilities that the United States has, and the alliance has, for the maintenance of our defensive deterrent capability. That's what we have to keep our eye on. And [he] says that, broadly speaking, what we need for deterrence is a reflection of what the Soviet Union has aimed at us.

2 Document 62.

1 Department of State Bulletin, August 1986, pp. 54–55. The remarks were made following the meeting, which was held in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

2 The texts of the SALT II agreements may be found in Documents on Disarmament, 1979, pp. 189 ff.

We will have to take into account, in our own behavior, what they do. And beyond that, in a period of budgetary constraints, we have to look at our own resources and use them most effectively.

The fact of the matter is that, in terms of the limits of SALT II, the United States is within those limits, and the Soviet Union is the country that is not. However, we put that all behind us and look at the future and say there can be a de facto form of mutual restraint. We hope so; the President flatly calls for it. However, the most important thing is that we have to get on with the business of what was called for in the basic SALT and ABM agreements3 to begin with, namely, let's get the levels of these nuclear weapons down. That is what the President has been proposing all along, and that is what the President and Mr. Gorbachev agreed in Geneva to try to do. And there is an important forum in Geneva where we have major positions on the table calling for radical reductions—not limits on the increases but radical reductions-in these nuclear arsenals. And that's what we need to do.

Q. Can you comment on the apparent illogic of suggesting substitute restraints while promising to abandon the restraint that we already have at a time when new restraints are obviously very difficult to negotiate?

A. The so-called restraints that we already have are obsolete, unratified, and being violated. The fact that they are increasingly obsolete shows that you need to point your attention to different things, and that is what, in effect, we are doing. But obviously, just to restate it, the United States has a responsibility to itself and to its allies to maintain the effectiveness of our deterrent capability and not have it erode; and that is what the President intends to do.

Q. Did the allied opposition you ran into here make any differences whatsoever in your decision to move on from SALT?

A. There have been extensive discussions with the allies, going back over a period of years, very formally about a year ago in Portugal, and in connection with this decision. Their views are known and have been taken into account. I think that the very strong allied view that we have to maintain deterrence, that we should be watching Soviet behavior, and that we need to negotiate radical reductions in nuclear weapons comes through loud and clear, and we are all on the same wavelength there. We have a disagreement with some countries, not necessarily all, on the President's most recent decision. To a certain extent, at least in listening to the discussion, there was more argument about the imagery than the content. And I think we have to be careful in all of this propaganda war, so to speak, that we do the right thing; that we don't do wrong things because we think it will sound better.

3 For the ABM agreement, see ibid., 1972, pp. 197-201.

90. Press Statement by the Western Delegations to the Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions Talks, May 30, 19861

In his plenary statement today, Ambassador Michael Alexander, the head of the delegation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, on behalf of the West, repeated the point made in Ambassador Blackwill's 5 December plenary statement to the effect that our talks were at a crossroads.2 He said that unless the East is prepared to reconsider its position on several important issues the current impasse will deepen and the opportunity for real progress created by the West's move of 5 December will be squandered.

He said that much rhetorical attention has been focused on the 16 points of agreement between East and West summarized in his statement of 5 December and the East now seems to have accepted these. In the same statement he had also reviewed some remaining areas of disagreement. With the benefit of hindsight, he said that he might have been well advised also to summarize points of disagreement with equal conciseness. It is, after all, on the disagreements which the sides must concentrate.

In order to make possible a first phase agreement which would genuinely enhance the present degree of stability, security and mutual confidence in central Europe:

(1) The Western side is prepared to see U.S. and Soviet forces in Central Europe reduced in a balanced manner. The Eastern side has so far not been prepared to agree to this.

(II) The Western side is prepared to reveal the size and composition of its forces in the area of reductions down to a level at which it will become possible for the other side to verify effectively the information provided, i.e., down to battalion level or equivalent. The Eastern side has so far not been prepared to agree to do

this.

(III) The Western side is prepared to establish permanent exit-entry points through which all military personnel entering and leaving the area of reductions would pass. The Eastern side no longer seems prepared to agree to do this.

(IV) The Western side is prepared to allow Western force levels remaining in the area of reductions after initial withdrawals to be checked as a matter of right and routine by the other side. The Eastern side has so far not been prepared to agree to do this.

More specifically, in this context the West is prepared:

(V) To allow the other side 30 inspections per year as of right and routine on our territory.

(VI) To allow these inspections to be mounted at very short notice.

(VII) To allow the other side to enter our military installations.

The East has so far not been prepared to agree to do any of these things.

ACDA files.

2The gist of this statement, as expressed by the President, may be found in Documents on Disarmament, 1985, pp. 898–899.

Furthermore, the West is prepared:

(VIII) To envisage the extension of confidence-building measures to territory beyond the area of reductions. The Eastern side has so far not been prepared to agree to do this.

What is worse:

(IX) While the West is prepared to discuss any aspect of its proposals and puts forward nothing on a take it or leave it basis, the East has so far not been willing even to discuss the points which he had just summarized.

Not only is the East unwilling to get into a serious discussion of the West's proposals-which were, of course submitted to it in great detail on 30 January

but:

(X) The East is not prepared to engage in a serious discussion of its own proposals.

He then summarized some of the questions which in recent months have been addressed to the East by the West and which have received no reply

(A) How precisely is one supposed to verify information about force levels which is not disaggregated in any significant way?

(B) How does one check a no-increase commitment from which an annual rotation of some 500,000 men is excluded?

(C) How does one check indigenous force levels under the regime envisaged by the East?

(D) How can confidence be generated by a system in which the party suspected of breaching an agreement is the one which decides whether or not the alleged breach shall be checked?

This list of questions brought him to a further fundamental disagreement between the two sides.

(XI) The West is not only prepared for but eager for a discussion of all the practical modalities of both sides' concept for a first phase agreement-not just some of them as the East sometimes seems to be suggesting.

The West believes such discussion to be the only way forward. The East's responses to the West's repeated attempts to get down to brass tacks have occasionally included apparent offers to talk about particular issues but these offers have not been substantiated. More often the response has been high flown rhetoric accompanied by catalogues of statements and initiatives made by Eastern leaders in other fora. These statements are no doubt admirable but they get the sides in Vienna nowhere. Against the background summarized in this and previous paragraphs, Eastern assertions that the West's approach is fantastic and arbitrary, unrealistic and irrelevant carry little conviction.

Is there then nothing the East is prepared to do which the West will not join? Certainly there are things which the East professes its willingness to do but on which the Western side have doubts. He then considered some of them:

(XII) The East seems determined to include armaments in a first phase agreement while the West is not prepared to do this.

The West's reasoning is straightforward. The West believes-and Ambassador Alexander could not exclude the possibility that the East also believes thisthat to attempt to include armaments would be to ensure the indefinite postponement of an agreement. He doubted that any of the delegations in Vienna have, for