"Some Cautious Melting"

By John Kohan

Shultz and Gromyko exchange tough words, then five hours of quiet talk

Snow was swirling as the American delegation drove up to the tall iron gates of the Soviet embassy in southwestern Stockholm. So when U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko exchanged pleasantries at the start of their long-anticipated meeting last week, the talk quite naturally turned to the weather. "You have to come to the U.S. to find out how cold this winter is," said Shultz. The Soviet diplomat was quick with a comeback. "I've read all about it," replied Gromyko. "Some of our Muscovites can say, 'Now the Americans know what frost means.'"

The weather, of course, had little to do with the chilly climate on the two diplomats' minds. Ever since their stormy shouting match in Madrid last September over the Soviet downing of the Korean Air Lines jet carrying 269 passengers and crew, superpower relations have been glacial. In better diplomatic times, the Conference on Confidence and Security-Building Measures and Disarmament in Europe, which opened in Stockholm last week, would not have attracted such international attention. But other negotiating forums have been vacant since the Soviets, in protest against the deployment of new NATO missiles on the Continent, walked out of the Geneva talks on limiting intermediate-range missiles in Europe and indefinitely postponed discussions aimed at reducing strategic weapons and cutting back on conventional forces. Even though the Stockholm conference had no mandate to discuss nuclear weapons, it offered a new venue, where both sides could at least try to raise the temperature of their relationship.

The week proved to be an anxious one, full of conflicting signals. It began as President Reagan issued a deliberately conciliatory message that raised hopes of a diplomatic thaw. But Western spirits sank when Gromyko responded in Stockholm with an attack against U.S. policy that, in the circumstances, seemed excessively vitriolic. The prospects improved again when a meeting .between Shultz and Gromyko that had been scheduled to last three hours continued well past the allotted time, and then seemed less encouraging when Shultz returned home to report that they had made "no headway" on arms control. Sorting through the confusing mix of mild words and harsh retorts, diplomats at the 35-nation conference were left wondering what the next move could be in the fumbling superpower two-step. "We are obviously in a delicate phase," said a Shultz aide. "One doesn't want to put a foot wrong here."

Reagan took the initiative in an address on U.S.-Soviet relations that he hoped would ease tensions as the diplomats gathered in Stockholm. He solemnly told a group of Congressmen and officials in the East Room of the White House that he believed the U.S. was now strong enough in military and economic terms to seek improved ties with Moscow. "Our working relationship with the Soviet Union is not what it must be," said the President. "We must and will engage the Soviets in a dialogue as serious and constructive as possible." But he dismissed criticism that his tough talk had damaged superpower relations. Said Reagan: "We don't refuse to talk when the Soviets call us imperialist aggressors and worse or because they cling to the fantasy of a Communist triumph over democracy."

The President's speech was noticeably free of the epithets that have so rankled the Politburo in the past, such as his characterization of the Soviet Union as "the focus of evil in the modern world."

Instead, the President evoked the homespun image of Ivan and Anya and Jim and Sally, ordinary Russians and Americans who might one day meet in a waiting room or share a shelter from the storm and come to talk about their children, their hobbies and their hopes for the future. "Their common interests cross all borders," said the President, in calling on the Kremlin to help work for peace. He promised the Soviets that the U.S.

was prepared to negotiate arms-control agreements "in good faith," noting that "whenever the Soviet Union is ready to do likewise, we'll meet them halfway."

The presidential message may have reflected a change in Reagan's thinking and the growing feeling among foreign policy advisers that a conciliatory tone should accompany his hard-line approach toward the Soviet Union. But there were only limited indications that Moscow was ready to pick up where superpower relations left off in the aftermath of the Korean Air Lines crisis. There were some suspicions in Washington that domestic politics was motivating Reagan's change of heart, and Moscow was totally unwilling to give the President the benefit of the doubt. On the eve of the conference, Shultz's assessment of the prospects for his upcoming meeting with Gromyko was guarded. Said he: "I don't want to put any spin on it at all--either optimism or pessimism."

French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson was pessimistic as he came away from a private session with his Soviet counterpart. Said Cheysson, speaking of the Shultz-Gromyko meeting: "I would be very surprised if it wound up with a phrase like 'Dear friend, let's get together next week on this.' " Shultz was the first of the two men to stand on the podium in the ultramodern assembly hall. While Gromyko looked on impassively, the U.S. Secretary of State repeated Reagan's call for the superpowers to get down to business. It was time, said Shultz, to seek "a relationship not marked by the abrupt shifts, exaggerated expectations and dashed hopes of the last decade."

He held open the door to renewed arms talks, noting that "we are ready for negotiations whenever the Soviet Union is prepared." Shultz offered no new proposal for reviving the ruptured Geneva talks. Instead, following up a similar offer by the Warsaw Pact, he announced that the U.S.

was planning to propose a treaty on "the complete and verifiable elimination of chemical weapons"--but on a global basis.

In what struck the Soviets and many Europeans as a sour note, Shultz expressed repugnance at the postwar division of Europe, labeling it an "artificial barrier" that had "cruelly divided this continent--and indeed, heartlessly divided one of its great nations."

That American rebuke proved to be mild compared with the tongue-lashing that Gromyko delivered during his almost hourlong harangue the next day. Expressing scorn, anger and suspicion, the veteran Soviet diplomat railed against Washington's "maniacal plans," "criminal and dishonest methods" and "pathological obsession" with building new armaments. He dismissed the Reagan speech as a "hackneyed ploy" that fooled no one. "It is deeds that are needed, not verbal exercises," said Gromyko.

West European diplomats were stunned by Gromyko's rhetoric. Belgian Foreign Minister Leo Tindemans described the tone of the Soviet speech as "vulgar." Said West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher: "We have little regard for a policy of confrontation or the language of confrontation." The U.S. delegation seemed equally disappointed as it left for the meeting with Gromyko later in the day. There were doubts that the talks, which were scheduled to begin at 3 p.m., would last the allotted three hours. Promptly at 6, the official Soviet news agency, TASS, printed a dispatch saying that Gromyko had "resolutely denounced" U.S. policy. Western reporters took that as a signal that the talks were over, but then a U.S. diplomat appeared with the surprising news that "the meeting is still going on." Shultz was finally seen leaving the Soviet embassy five hours and ten minutes after his arrival.

Gromyko's words were decidedly less virulent in private than in public. In brisk, five-to ten-minute exchanges, Shultz and Gromyko discussed arms control, Central America, the Middle East, Afghanistan, human rights, the Stockholm conference and safeguards for airliners on international flights. Neither side was reticent in stating its grievances, but when Gromyko referred to the Iranians as "your good friends," the Americans laughed. Shultz, said an aide, had recognized that the Gromyko speech was for public consumption, but in the private meeting "nobody was talking for effect only." The two men smiled and shook hands both before and after the meeting and, said a member of the U.S. delegation, "there were more smiles after."

Still, as Shultz told reporters later, there had been "no movement, no change in position" on the contentious issue of intermediate-range missiles in Europe. Pressed as to whether the two diplomats had settled anything, Shultz protested, "It wasn't that kind of meeting." He described the atmosphere as "straightforward, businesslike," and said the talks had been "worthwhile" and "necessary."

The Soviets continued to insist that they will not return to the table in Geneva until the new Pershing II and cruise missiles that were installed in West Germany, Britain and Italy last year are removed. To underscore Soviet concern about the new weapons, the official newspaper of the Soviet Defense Ministry, Krasnaya Zvezda, reported last week that "fierce, mighty weapons"--presumably, short-range SS-21, SS-22 and SS-23 missiles--had already been installed in East Germany and Czechoslovakia to counter the NATO threat. A Soviet officer quoted in the newspaper explained that "we must be prepared to give a due rebuff to the aggressor." But if Moscow was stiff as ever about intermediate-range missiles, Gro myko did suggest that the Soviets would return, probably in mid-March, to the Vienna negotiations on the reduction of conventional forces in Europe, which the Soviets "suspended" just before Christmas.

It is not likely, given the depth of Soviet feelings toward Reagan, that Moscow will do more in the immediate future than keep communication lines open to the West. Another factor troubling the future of bilateral progress is the uncertain health of Soviet Leader Yuri Andropov, who has not been seen in public since last August. But there were no suggestions in Gromyko's behavior in Stockholm that he felt constrained by any leadership vacuum in the Kremlin. Said a U.S. diplomat:

"He certainly conveyed no sense of paralysis." In Moscow, Viktor Afanasyev, editor in chief of Pravda, dropped hints in an interview that Andropov might reappear as early as next week. He also confirmed rumors that the Soviet leader was suffering from a kidney ailment, aggravated by influenza. In any case, the elder Andropov was not so critically ill that his son Igor, a diplomat who has participated in a number of recent East-West conferences, could not join the Soviet diplomatic team in the Swedish capital.

In the meantime, little can be expected soon from the Stockholm conference, which will begin negotiations this week aimed at reducing the risk of conventional war in Europe. The NATO delegations want an agreement improving the present system of advance warning of military maneuvers and increasing exchanges of military observers and information.

But the Warsaw Pact appeared to have a different agenda. At last week's opening ceremonies, speaker after speaker from the East bloc echoed Moscow's criticism of the NATO missile deployment. They also called on the U.S.

to announce that it would never be the first to use nuclear weapons, a pledge the West has always avoided because nuclear weapons are its most effective security guarantee in the face of the Soviet bloc's superiority in conventional weapons in Europe.

The host of the conference, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, said that he did not expect a "rapid thaw" in the superpower chill but he could at least foresee "some cautious melting." The Shultz and Gromyko meeting in Stockholm seemed too tentative to serve as a reliable marker on the road back to a warmer U.S.-Soviet climate. But more warmth is wanted.

A group of 2,000 children braved icy winds in the broad concrete plaza outside the conference hall to hold up placards spelling out a message for the visiting foreign dignitaries: THE WORLD IS WAITING. --By John Kohan. Reported by Erik Am fitheatrof/Stockholm and Barrett Seaman with Shultz

With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof, Barrett Seaman