important to maintain the unity and solidarity of the alliance. The European allies must define their interests and introduce them into the negotiations. [applause]

In this connection the agreement reached in Frankfurt at the German-French summit on closer coordination among the FRG, France, and Great Britain on current disarmament and security issues is of special importance.

We are in the midst of an important and positive phase of East-West relations. Never before have the two world powers been so close on central problems of arms control. Never before were there such far-reaching and comprehensive disarmament proposals on the table. With goodwill on both sides, agreements can now be reached at negotiations that will safeguard the security interests of all participants.

Ladies and gentlemen, that development confirms the Federal Government's policy of recent years, which has been oriented from the very beginning toward maintaining peace and constructive cooperation. It confirms my statements made in January and April, when I spoke about the further development of the EastWest dialogue. From my point of view, and consistent with the vital interests of the FRG, four agreements could be reached in the near future: an agreement on longer range intermediate-range weapons, including a commitment to continue negotiations on the shorter range systems in order to reduce them and to establish an equal upper limit, an agreement on reducing the number of all strategic nuclear weapons by half, a worldwide ban on chemical weapons, and an agreement on limiting nuclear tests step-by-step along with the reductions in nuclear weapons. The hope and the perspective of significant decisions and a peaceful and safe world with fewer weapons occurs at the same time that 35 states are to meet in Vienna at the CSCE follow-up. That meeting will deal with all aspects of EastWest cooperation, and, of course, with important security issues.

212. News Conference Remarks by Soviet Foreign Minster Shevardnadze: Results of the Meetings in Reykjavik and Vienna [Extracts], November 10, 19861

You know that I have held talks with the U.S. Secretary of State, Mr Shultz, in Vienna on November 5 and 6.

Those talks were not the only reason why I went to the Austrian capital. A followup meeting of the states participating in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe opened there in November 4. This is why in my statement at Vienna airport on the morning of November 6 I paid most attention to that

Moscow TASS in English, November 10, 1986; FBIS Daily Report, November 13. 1986, vol. III, pp. AA1-AA6.

meeting. The results of my conversation with the secretary of state were described only briefly, in the most general form.

Now that time allows us to make a more careful analysis of, and compare, the sides' positions at the talks in Vienna, we shall give you the facts and our understanding of them.

Let me tell you first the aim we set ourselves. After the meeting in Reykjavik American representatives in the public statements gave very loose accounts of what we said at Hofdi House. Facts fresh in our memory were being presented in such a wide range of distortions that we felt we just had to ask our recent interlocutors about the reasons behind this amazing discordance.

But what was most important was to make sure that the American side was committed to the accords reached by Mikhail Gorbachev, general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, and U.S. President Ronald Reagan and if it was, that it was ready to continue working from the level achieved, both politically and in terms of positions.

That question became the focal point of the talks. We kept asking it with such insistence as we had never before inquired anything of our partners.

We had to do so because we realized from the outset that they would like to revise every aspect of mutual understanding reached in Reykjavik and retreat to the pre-Reykjavik position. They would like to rewrite the results of the talks between the leaders of our countries. They would like us to accept an entirely new package of issues supposedly discussed and a list of matters agreed in Iceland curtailed to the point of becoming unrecognizable.

We had set on the table before us an amazing assortment of papers which actually cancelled everything achieved by the sides in Reykjavik. All those levels and sublevels, limits and sublimits, all the expert arithmetics that seemed to have been abolished once and for good in the Icelandic capital surfaced anew to obscure the substance.

But what turned out to be most striking in our partner's stand was that the global solution to the crucial issue of eliminating all the nuclear arsenals of the USSR and the United States, and first and foremost strategic offensive armaments, within ten years, which was found in Reykjavik, was flatly denied. The explicit statement by the two countries' leaders on this score appeared entangled in a net of technical casuistry. The cells of this net are so small that nothing resembling agreement is visible.

As a direct participant in the talks in the Icelandic capital, I remember well the way the agreement in principle on the entire package of the measures for nuclear disarmament was reached, with the exception the one issue of SDI. I presume that my Vienna interlocutor also remembers this. In any case, President Reagan held that the remaining issues in this package were agreed upon.

Speaking about extra-laboratory tests of space weapons as the only divergency, he said that the matter now was in one word, to which Mikhail Gorbachev replied and I cite him: "Agree to banning tests in space and we will sign the document in two minutes".

Precisely that divergency became unbridgeable for the moment and we parted expressing disappointment.

However, the package (I shall describe it as a package of accords) remained, and the most important thing in it was the agreement of the two sides to scrap in ten years "all nuclear devices", i.e. each and every nuclear weapon. By the way, the U.S. President specified what should be scrapped. To make this point clear once and for all, I have to quote the words of the President. He said that he wanted to ask if we meant-and this, in his opinion, would be very good-the scrapping by the end of the two five-year periods of all the nuclear explosive devices, that is bombs, battlefield weapons systems, cruise missiles, submarine weapons, medium-range weapon systems etc. If we agree that by the end of the 10-year period all the nuclear armaments will be eliminated, we can pass over the agreement to our delegations in Geneva, so that they prepare a treaty which Mikhail Gorbachev can sign during his visit to the United States.

Within the framework of this general and the most important commitment the sides agreed on the order of steps to be taken towards scrapping nuclear weapons. They agreed that in the first five years strategic offensive nuclear weapons would be reduced by half.

The general secretary handed the U.S. President a table with breakdown data on the strategic forces of the USSR and the United States and suggested reducing all systems, including Soviet heavy missiles, by half. The American President fully assented to this.

It was also agreed that all the remaining strategic offensive nuclear weapons would be scrapped in the second half-decade. The American side at that point asked us to clarify just one aspect, namely whether offensive ballistic missiles would also be destroyed in the process. The answer was in the affirmative.

An understanding on medium-range missiles was the second element of the "package of accords". It boiled down to the following formula: Zero mediumrange missiles in Europe plus a freeze on the shorter-range missiles there plus the commencement of talks on them plus the reduction of the warheads on Soviet missiles in the Asian part of the USSR to 100, with the United States being entitled to have the same number of warheads on its medium-range missiles on its own territory.

Every component of that equation was mentioned separately, and the American side gave its consent to each of them, without voicing any reservation or criticisms.

The question of nuclear testing also became part of the package. We proposed that talks be started to draw up an agreement on a total nuclear test ban and to discuss intermediate options, such as limitations on the yield of nuclear explosions and their number and the 1974 and 1976 treaties.2

Lastly, the problem of "strategic defences". A major understanding of principle was recorded on them, too: The sides would not withdraw from the ABM treaty3 for 10 years. But an obstacle arose there as well because of the unwillingness of the American side to restrict work under the SDI programme and their

2 These treaties are printed in Documents on Disarmament, 1974, pp. 225-229, and 1976, pp. 328-332, respectively.

3 For the text of the Treaty, see ibid., 1972, pp. 197–202.

desire to get us at all cost to agree to the cancellation of the ABM treaty after that ten-year period during which the USA would get ready a space weapon system to deploy a space weapon system.

I have gone over the course of discussions and the accords reached to show that the Reykjavik package was integral for the sides with the exception of SDI and, partially, nuclear testing. Agreement was reached in Reykjavik on all the other issues.

This was stated absolutely unambiguously by Mikhail Gorbachev at a press conference in the Icelandic capital an hour after the meeting had closed. He made that point in later statements, too.

Regrettably, both in Vienna and now in Moscow we have to tell some common truths to put clearly on record the line which our partners and we were going to follow.

What we were offered in Vienna could be compared with a theatre of political farce in which one theme prevailed: The Reykjavik meeting seems to have taken place, but it was different from what we think it was.

The talks had to be brought back to realistic ground. We had prepared beforehand a document "Key Provisions of Agreements Between the USSR and the U.S. on Nuclear Disarmament Which are Subject to Further Preparation for Signing". We put it on the negotiating table during the talks with the U.S. secretary of state.

It was a sort of draft framework agreement which, if coordinated by ministers, would be submitted for approval to the general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and the U.S. President. Thus, the delegations in Geneva would be given a firm basis for working out texts to specific agreements.

The document set forth the main parameters for accords on all the four spheres of the nuclear-space complex.

Excuse me, but I think it essential to detail all aspects of the proposals we tabled at the Vienna talks.

On strategic offensive armaments we proposed to take as a basis for an agreement the accord in principle reached in Reykjavik to the effect that in the course of five years, i.e. by the end of 1991, the sides would reduce their strategic forces by 50 per cent to an equal number of delivery vehicles and warheads. With a view to preserving the characteristic features of the structure of the Soviet and American strategic forces, all strategic offensive armaments, including, of course, Soviet heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles, would be subject to reduction.

As to sea-launched long-range nuclear cruise missiles that do not belong to the strategic triad it is intended to find a separate mutually acceptable decision on the limitation of their deployment.

The remaining 50 percent of all strategic offensive weapons of the USSR and the United States would be liquidated in the course of the next five years, by the end of 1996, as agreed in Reykjavik. The readiness of the sides to work for an agreement for full elimination of all types of nuclear arms in the course of a tenyear period was also reflected accordingly.

The wording on medium-range missiles was also fully based on the accords in Reykjavik. Leaving aside the matter of the nuclear potentials of Britain and

France, the sides would sign an agreement on total liquidation of the mediumrange missiles of the USSR and the United States in Europe. Talks would be started urgently on missiles with a range not exceeding one thousand kilometres and their level would be frozen.

At the same time an agreement would also go into force reducing the mediumrange missiles in the Asian part of the USSR to the level of 100 warheads, the United States having the right to deploy 100 warheads, on such missiles on its territory.

With due consideration for the need to preclude any possibility-in conditions of such deep cuts of nuclear arms-of either side getting military superiority and disrupting the equilibrium we confirmed the proposal to agree that the USSR and United States shall not exercise their right to withdraw from the timeless treaty on the limitation of ABM systems and shall strictly observe all of its provisions for the ten years.

We did not insist in the termination of all research under the SDI programme. More than that, such research and testing would have been permitted within laboratories. The ban was to apply to the testing of the cosmic elements of the ABM defence in outer space. In a few subsequent years the sides could have found in the process of negotiations further mutually acceptable solutions in this field.

I would like to clarify this point. I believe it is perfectly natural and legitimate to put the issue in this way: Laboratory research, including the building of ready samples, prototypes of corresponding defensive systems, will be allowed for ten years, after which the sides will look at what has come of it in practice, and be consequently able to conduct talks on what the results of corresponding research and testing in laboratory are in practice.

The Soviet delegation said it favoured the commencement of talks at a high level in the near future with the aim of determining what work on ABM weapons is permitted by the ABM treaty and what is not. The American side was not enthusiastic about the idea.

We have also proposed coming to mutually acceptable arrangements to ban anti-satellite weapons. This is a very important proposition. The development of anti-satellite weapons might open a broad channel for bypassing the ban in the creation of space systems of anti-missile weapons. Therefore this channel should be blocked.

And finally, the fourth area: banning nuclear tests. The Soviet Union has been and remains firmly in favour of their immediate and complete termination. But. taking into account the situation which has developed, we have suggested that full-scale bilateral talks be started without delay, talks which would carry us to a complete ban on nuclear explosions.

Such is the gist of the draft working document which we have submitted for the consideration of the U.S. side in Vienna. It fully reproduces what the leaders of the two countries agreed upon in the Icelandic capital.

The U.S. side has set itself quite a different aim: to replace the Reykjavik package with a Vienna package from which the fundamental crucial arrangement has been dropped while other arrangements have been washed out with a multitude of reservations, stipulations and one-sided interpretations.