TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/85/85capts.16

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                                                                                December 2, 1985

COVER STORY

Fencing at the Fireside Summit


With candor and civility, Reagan and Gorbachev grappled for
answers to the arms-race riddle


The President of the United States offered his vision of a
safer world, and the General Secretary of the Soviet Union's
Communist Party did not believe a word of it. As the two
superpower leaders sat across from each other last week at the
bargaining table in an elegant salon in Geneva, Ronald Reagan
implored Mikhail Gorbachev to join him in his dream of
"rendering nuclear weapons obsolete" with a space-based missile
defense system. Coldly fixing Reagan in his gaze, Gorbachev
would have none of it. "It's not convincing. It's emotional.
It's a dream. Who can control it?  Who can monitor it? It
opens up an arms race in space."

In a purposely calm voice, Reagan responded, "As I said to you,
I have a right to think you want to use your missiles against
us. With mere words we cannot abolish the threat."

Frustrated, Gorbachev exclaimed, "Why don't you believe us when
we say we will not use weapons against you?"

As Reagan tried to speak, Gorbachev interrupted, "Please answer
me, Mr. President. What is your answer?"  Again Reagan began
to reply; again Gorbachev angrily insisted, "Answer my simple
question!"

Finally, Reagan was able to utter a reply:  "I cannot say to
the American people that I could take you at your word if you
don't believe us."

Rarely have the inexorable forces of history been so starkly
revealed by an exchange between two world leaders. Despite all
the public handshakes and smiles, and despite the apparent
rapport that emerged between two confident and forceful men last
week, they were caught by a stark axiom of the Soviet-American
rivalry:  neither side can afford to base the security of a
nation on trust alone. For 40 years, ever since the earliest
days of the cold war, each American President, each Kremlin
leader, has felt compelled to counter every move by a
countermove, every new weapon with a newer weapon, every show
of strength with a greater show of strength. The two hands
that control the planet's survival may clasp in a show of
summit cordiality, but measurable progress to curtail their
nuclear arsenals requires far, far more than ceremonial displays
of goodwill.

And yet, as Reagan and Gorbachev met at the summit last week,
the eleventh such meeting between the U.S. and Soviet leaders
in the past three decades, they knew, and reminded each other,
that there can be no winners in a nuclear war. For two days,
as the world warily watched, the two men groped for some kind
of human understanding, some way to master the nuclear riddle.
Meeting face to face for the first time, Reagan and Gorbachev
tried to set some rules to contain the arms race, some
guidelines to rein in their rivalries.

That they failed in the brief time allowed was perhaps
inevitable. That they tried, and agreed to keep on trying, was
good news after six years of stonewalling and invective at long
range. Equally important, the frank but earnest exchange
between the two leaders may have served to shore up support back
home, without which neither leader can deliver on any good
intentions.

The "fireside summit," as Reagan described his meeting with
Gorbachev, was not, in the lexicon of diplomacy, "precooked."
The principles had no orchestrated script to follow, no
important, let alone prearranged, accords to proclaim. For
almost five of the eight hours allotted to the sessions, the two
men surprised their aides by closeting themselves alone, each
trying to probe the other's mind and test his will.

Reagan's advisers were delighted with the boss's performance.
Said Donald Regan, the President's chief of staff, in reply to
those who had doubted the President's ability to stand up to the
Soviet:  "This movie actor, this President who had to have his
staff prop him up, the man who couldn't do anything without a
script, was able to take on this dynamic personality...and hold
his own, not give away the shop, not eat crow."

In terms of substance, Reagan and Gorbachev did not achieve
much. A 4 1/2-page joint statement pledged to "accelerate"
arms-control negotiations and called for a 50% reduction in
nuclear arms by each side. But it offered no instructions on
how to break the impasse over what to count in the 50%, which
stymies the ongoing Geneva arms talks. Reagan refused to back
off from his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), known as Star
Wars, and Gorbachev refused to back away from his insistence
that the arms race be barred from outer space. Though the
summit served to give diplomacy between the two powers some much
needed impetus, the fruits are unknowable. As Reagan candidly
conceded at the end, "The real report card on Geneva will not
come in for months or even years."

The most important accomplishment of the summit was the decision
to hold two more. Reagan invited Gorbachev to meet with him in
the U.S. as early as next June, and Gorbachev returned the favor
by asking Reagan to the Soviet Union, perhaps in the winter of
1987. In those chilly half-dozen years since an American
President last met his Soviet counterpart, suspicions and
arsenals had multiplied apace; it was just possible that the
resumption of regular summits would set in motion expectations
that would force more substantial results next time and the time
after.

The intense private discussions between the two superpower
leaders, reconstructed here by TIME correspondents from
interviews with top U.S. and Soviet advisers, revealed that
considerable mistrust inevitably remains on both sides. Yet the
two leaders, each a forceful personality in his own right,
showed they could engage in forthright debate without succumbing
to the hyperbole and table pounding that have marred U.S.-Soviet
confrontations in the past. The vigorous exchanges that took
place in a series of high-ceilinged drawing rooms and cozy nooks
on the shores of Lake Geneva last week offer a fascinating
glimpse of the competitive global arena, as seen through the
prisms of East and West and through the minds of two formidable
men.

As Reagan awaited Gorbachev for the first day of talks last
Tuesday at Fleur d'Eau, the 19th century lakeside chateau
borrowed by the U.S. as its working headquarters, he seemed
jaunty and eager, almost impatient to get on with the main
event. "Are you ready, Dad?" asked his son Ron, who had tagged
along with a set or press credentials from Playboy magazine and
an understandable desire to witness his father make history.
"Absolutely," responded the President.

At 10 a.m., Gorbachev's heavily armored black ZIL limousine,
airlifted from Moscow, swung into view. Reagan, shedding his
overcoat, stepped out into the raw morning and stood stiffly at
the top of the steps, as if at attention. Quickly striding from
his car, Gorbachev theatrically swept of his black fedora.
Reagan came down and grasped the hand of his rival with a firm
handshake seen around the world. As both men smiled broadly,
the American President, 20 years older and four inches taller
than his Kremlin opposite, gently steered his guest inside.

The two were supposed to chat privately, alone with their
interpreters, for just 15 minutes before joining their advisers,
half a dozen on each side, for a formal discussion of relations
between the two countries. Reagan, however, had a different
idea. Right away he proposed to Gorbachev that the two of them
do as much of their business as possible in private, away from
their staffs. Gorbachev accepted with alacrity. "Here we are,"
said Reagan when the two men had settled into highbacked
armchairs by the fire in a small sitting room. "Between us, we
could come up with things that could bring peace for years to
come."

The pattern for the summit was set:  though each leader had
brought with him a wide array of senior advisers who had labored
for months to lay the groundwork, the essential work would be
done one to one, face to face. "All that machinery, all those
cars and buildings and communications and people, and then, by
God, two personalities just took charge," a top Administration
official later mused. "Everything was different once those two
leaders shook hands."

Reagan had been well coached on what to expect from his Kremlin
rival. Gorbachev had been forceful and unyielding at his
presummit meeting in Moscow two weeks before with Secretary of
State George Shultz, and Shultz had passed along to Reagan a
vivid description of the Kremlin leader in action:  assertive,
dynamic, very opinionated and not easily swayed by eloquent
rhetoric. Nonetheless, Shultz had counseled, Gorbachev was a
good listener, and extremely curious to learn more about the
mind-sets of his Western adversaries.

A week before the summit, Reagan had intimated that he wanted
to take personal charge by demanding that he be shown no more
briefing books, be given no more lectures. "That was when he
started calling it his summit," recalled an aide. Shultz had
even advised his counterpart, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard
Shevardnadze, that "my guy likes to size up his opposite number
and see what he's really like, and the way for them to do that
is for them to spend some time alone."

Nonetheless, Reagan's decision to disappear with Gorbachev for
nearly an hour at the very outset came as a surprise to his
advisers. As the two leaders remained behind closed doors on
that first morning and their aides began a reverse countdown,
ticking off how long they were exceeding their schedules, one
American official came up to Shultz, nervously pointing at his
watch and fretting that the Big Two were not keeping to the
program. Retorted Shultz:  "If you're dumb enough to go in
there and break it up, you don't deserve to be employed here."

While their aides fidgeted outside, Reagan and Gorbachev were
educating each other on their divergent world views. Gorbachev
charged that America was run by a military-industrial complex
that tries to fatten defense spending by inducing U.S. paranoia
about the Soviet Union. He told Reagan that the President was
in the thrall of a cabal of archconservatives. He claimed that
American think tanks, citing the Heritage Foundation in
Washington and the Hoover Institution in California, were
feeding Reagan plans "designed to break down the Soviet
economy."  Reagan replied with astonishment to Gorbachev's
conspiracy theories. Indeed, he said, he had always operated
on the belief that government fouls up anytime it tries to
manipulate the economy. Gorbachev, the chief of a
state-planned economy, did not seem either amused or persuaded.

By the time the two men finally emerged from their 64-min.
tete-a- tete, they had already begun to hash over regional
issues, which, according to the summit agenda, were not supposed
to be discussed until the next day. While Reagan found the
large number of Soviet advisers in Nicaragua "intolerable,"
Gorbachev insisted that the U.S.S.R. was bound by its
constitution to aid "wars of national liberation."  Disavowing
imperialist ambitions, he went on, "We have no commercial
interests or desire for bases. We are just helping people
achieve freedom."  The Soviets, he added, in a dig at Reagan for
supporting anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua and Afghanistan,
"do not export counterrevolution."  Moscow's sponsorship of
regimes in Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Nicaragua and Kampuchea was
no different from Washington's support of governments in its own
"areas of vital interest," like El Salvador. Reagan dryly
retorted that, unlike the Soviets, the U.S. has not occupied
those areas with troops or gone to war there.

Gorbachev did offer one slight ray of hope on Afghanistan. The
Soviets did not want to keep their troops there indefinitely,
he declared, hinting that the Kremlin was searching for some
kind of political solution.

In the afternoon session at the American headquarters, the two
leaders took on the most essential, and contentious, issue of
the summit:  arms control. The debate that ensued was intense
and riveting.

Reagan spoke first, and clearly from the heart. He inveighed
against the "uncivilized nature" of mutually assured destruction
(MAD), the doctrine of deterrence that has governed the
superpower rivalry for more than two decades. He could not
condone the notion, he said, of keeping the peace by threatening
to blow up the world. We must, he implored Gorbachev, "find a
better way."  To the President, that meant reducing offensive
weapons while seeking a transition to defensive weapons. He was
quite conscious, he allowed, that Gorbachev sees a space defense
system as simply a cover for achieving the capacity to wipe out
the Soviets with a first strike. He wanted to assure Gorbachev
that this was not, and would never be, the aim of the U.S.

Gorbachev attempted to interrupt. "Please," Reagan said, "let
me finish."  The Soviet leader's concern, he said, was
perfectly legitimate. But he had an answer:  a promise of "open
laboratories." Once the U.S. had developed the technology to
build an effective shield against nuclear missiles, Reagan
offered, "I intend fully to share this with you all."

Gorbachev sat back and looked intently at Reagan "with very
fixed eye contact," recalls an official who was present. He did
not speak for a few moments. No one did. Then, in a very sober
and calm manner, he began a response that slowly swelled into
an impassioned outburst.

Gorbachev began by stating that he understood exactly what his
American opposite was saying, that he could see Reagan felt
strongly about his Strategic Defense Initiative. But, Gorbachev
insisted, a space system that rendered nuclear weapons obsolete
was simply not believable. It was far more plausible that
Reagan's true motives were sinister, that he planned to use a
defense system as a shield to enable the U.S. to launch a first
strike. "You can have dreams of peace," the Soviet leader
exclaimed, "but we have to face reality." Flushing, Gorbachev
began to gesture forcefully. "I'm not a bloodthirsty person,"
he insisted. "We must reduce all weapons, not start on new
ones."

Reagan tried to interject:  "But if we coupled it with our open
lab, our scientists could look at what you're doing. You could
look at what our side is doing."

But Gorbachev was beyond persuasion. "We should ban
introduction of all space weapons. Ban them!  Ban all space
weapons!"

It was at this point that Gorbachev burst out with this
question-- "Why don't you believe us?"--revealing the essential
conundrum that has faced both sides in the nuclear age and
providing the most dramatic, and discouraging, moment of the
summit. Finally, his emotions spent, Gorbachev glumly declared,
"It looks as if we've reached an impasse."

As a gloomy silence settled over the gilded, cream-colored room,
with its serene views of Lake Geneva, Reagan tried a different
approach. Perhaps both men could use a break, a change in
atmospherics. He proposed that they take a walk in the bracing
Geneva air. "Ah," Gorbachev said quickly. "Fresh air may bring
fresh ideas."  Replied Reagan:  "Maybe we'll find the two go
together."

Bundled against the cold, the two strolled down the gently
sloping lawn toward a small pool house close to the lake-shore.
In his genial manner, Reagan tried to disarm Gorbachev with
some self- deprecating humor. "By the way," the President
chuckled, "I'd appreciate it if you would tell Mr. Arbatov that
I did some good movies and not just grade-B movies."  Reagan was
referring to Kremlin Americanologist Georgi Arbatov's gibe at
Reagan's acting career during a press conference. "I know,"
Gorbachev responded. "I saw you in one where you played the man
without legs."  "King's Row," volunteered the President. "Yes!
That's it!" exclaimed the Kremlin chief, and both men laughed
away some of the tension.

Only again with only their interpreters, the two men settled
into overstuffed tan chairs in the wood-beamed pool house before
a roaring fire and resumed their arduous search for common
ground.

The changes of scenery was not exactly a spontaneous notion by
Reagan. The site had been scouted in advance, the fire lit and
glowing for their arrival. All along, Reagan had been waiting
for the proper moment to steal away with his Soviet counterpart.
He had tucked under his arm a manila envelope containing a
written set of guidelines for arms control that had been drafted
in Washington after much internal debate.

A test of our success, Reagan began, is what happens next in
the arms-control negotiations. Shouldn't we, he asked, give our
people some constructive guidance?  Reaching into the envelope,
he produced a thin sheaf of papers. The Soviet leader leaned
back in his chair, put on his glasses and quietly digested the
material Reagan handed him.

Translated into Russian were nine separate points, spelled out
in short paragraphs. One called for a 50% reduction in nuclear
arms, as both sides had already suggested in differing forms in
their proposals tabled at the Geneva arms talks earlier this
year. Another called for a separate interim agreement on
intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe, again an idea
both sides had already suggested. A third proposed that the two
sides formally explore the U.S. concept of a transition from
offensive to defensive weapons, with the understanding that each
could continue its strategic ballistic- missile defense program
"as permitted by, and in accordance with, the ABM treaty" of
1972. Other points called for verification measures to promote
confidence in compliance, and such other peacekeeping steps as
a global ban on chemical weapons, a strengthened agreement to
limit nuclear proliferation, and the establishment of "risk-
reduction centers" with an improved hot line to guard against
apocalyptic accidents.

The offer, asserted Reagan, was all or nothing. The Soviets
could agree to all of the guidelines, but they could not pick
and choose, accepting some items while rejecting others.

Gorbachev flatly rejected the package. When he finished
reading, he noted simply that the proposal would allow the U.S.
to forge ahead with SDI. Yes, responded Reagan, work on SDI
must go on. Then we just disagree, Gorbachev declared evenly.
The Soviets have consistently denied that they have a strategic
defense system of their own, and they have emphatically rejected
the U.S. argument that the ABM treaty permits research into a
space-based defense system. To accept Reagan's offer, Gorbachev
would abruptly have had to reverse well-established Kremlin
policy. This he was not about to do.

And yet, significantly, Gorbachev did not want discussions to
break down over the unresolved issue of Star Wars. We must
continue to talk, he declared.

As the tete-a-tete between the two global chieftains ranged on
into the twilight hours, their lieutenants waiting anxiously
back at the villa ran out of things to say to each other. Like
shy boys and girls waiting for the music to resume at dancing
school, they segregated, the Soviets into one cluster, the
Americans into another. Some U.S. advisers began to fret about
Reagan's enthusiasm for private discourse. The President is
known to be somewhat vague on detail, and a few of his aides
feared that their leader might say something misleading to his
opposite number or fail to understand something important said
to him. They were equally nervous that Reagan would fail to
report the private exchanges precisely to his aides, even though
the two interpreters were keeping notes. The apprehension was
not uniform. "The President knows what he doesn't know,"
observed one official, who reckoned that Reagan would stick to
the script he had earlier discussed with aides or offer only
generalities.

Having failed to remove the overwhelming obstacle presented by
Star Wars, the two superpower leaders donned their coats and
climbed back up the hill to rejoin their retinues. The mood of
the two men had become as dark as the chilled evening, but
Reagan was determined to end the day on an upbeat note. "I
think we agree," he said as they came to the parking lot, "that
this meeting is useful."  Yes, replied Gorbachev. Then we must
meet again, Reagan went on. It was then that he invited the
Kremlin leader to come to the U.S. "And I invite you to come
to the Soviet Union," responded Gorbachev. "I accept," stated
Reagan. "I accept," echoed Gorbachev. The gloom lifted. At
Gorbachev's limousine (inside of which a submachine gun rested
on the rear seat), the two men parted company.

The spirit was cordial at a small dinner for the Reagans that
night given by the Gorbachevs at the Soviets' squat,
three-story, modern- style mission in Geneva. In keeping with
the Kremlin's temperance campaign, the customary vodka toasts
were dispensed with, and the guests sipped white and red wines
from Soviet Georgia. Gorbachev and his wife Raisa recounted how
they had met at Moscow University, and she lamented that her
husband's new job gave her little time to pursue her academic
career. The Reagans extolled the charms of California, and
Gorbachev boasted about his grandchild, whom he professed to
spoil.

During that first day Reagan was struck by Gorbachev's
willingness to listen. "I'm some judge of acting," he later
remarked to reporters, "so I don't think he was acting."
Gorbachev looked so intently at Reagan that the President
momentarily forgot that the Soviet leader does not speak
English, and he kept talking without giving the interpreter a
chance to catch up. Gorbachev had to hold up his hand to get
Reagan to pause for translation. Reagan later recalled that he
had told a couple of jokes and wondered why he did not get a
laugh.

The next morning, as soon as the American delegation arrived at
the Soviet mission for Wednesday's round of talks, Reagan once
again asked his host if he would like to have a private chat.
The touch subject of human rights was on the President's mind.
He did not want to belabor the issue for fear of stiffening
Soviet resistance. But in the privacy of a small sitting room
in the Soviet mission, he told Gorbachev that if the Soviets
truly want to improve relations with the U.S., they must repair
their record on individual freedom. It is morally repugnant to
the U.S., "a nation of immigrants," to see Soviets unable to
leave their own country, Reagan said. And it is politically
untenable for American leaders to make deals with the Soviet
Union as long as Jews and dissidents are imprisoned.

Gorbachev did not filibuster with the usual Kremlin excuse that
human rights are an internal matter for the Soviet Union and not
the business of the U.S. Rather, he discoursed at length about
Soviet notions of individual freedom: freedom from hunger,
freedom from unemployment, freedom to secure health
care--freedoms, he implied, that were not universally enjoyed
by Americans. He was not sparing in his criticism of America's
abuse of its own racial minorities.

When they rejoined their advisers after an hour, the two sides
were once again bedeviled by Star Wars. Hoping that he might
use the enticement of large cuts in offensive weapons to extract
a concession from Reagan on Star Wars, Gorbachev declared,
"Something has to be done about SDI before we can get to the
subject of reductions." Reagan was not buying. "SDI," he
countered, "is long term enough that ought not to be the thing
to make strategic-missile reductions impossible now. Can we
afford to let this moment go by when both of us are talking
about 50% reductions?"

By midday on Wednesday it was perfectly clear that the two men
were not going to agree on the issue of strategic defense.
Increasingly, the question became whether they could find any
common ground on other issues, or at least enough to enable them
to produce a joint statement that would provide the world with
some tangible sign of progress.

Gloom hung over the American team's working lunch that day.
White House Spokesman Larry Speakes raised the prospect of
facing headlines that read SUMMIT BREAKS UP OVER SDI. He
wondered anxiously how it would play back home. Badly,
suggested Arms Control Adviser Paul Nitze, who noted that SDI
does not enjoy overwhelming public support in the U.S. Speakes
took the precaution of ordering press aides to prepare experts
who could fan out over Geneva that night to put the right spin
on news of a breakup.

At 3:30 p.m. the two leaders decided to have their Foreign
Ministers break away and assess the prospects for reaching any
kind of joint agreement. While Reagan and Gorbachev whiled away
the next hour and half in a sitting room at the Soviet mission,
where they sipped tea and Reagan cracked a few jokes,* Shultz
and Shevardnadze sorted through the unresolved issues. At 5
p.m. they returned to their bosses. Determined to salvage an
agreement, Gorbachev rattled off some rapid-fire instructions
to his underlings and told them to go back to work and report
later that evening. "That's what their job it," he shrugged to
Reagan. "We will be in a good mood after dinner."

Through the evening and into the night, the Soviet and American
teams worked feverishly to craft mutually acceptable language
while Reagan and Gorbachev socialized at a reception thrown by
the Swiss government and at a dinner given by the Reagans at
their residence, Maison de Saussure. At 10 p.m. the party
repaired to the library for coffee, and Reagan and Gorbachev
settled on a red sofa, an embroidered cushion between them and
their aides huddled around. Shultz quietly advised that
negotiations at the staff level were not going well. Then
Shultz, so seemingly bland in his public utterances, took a bold
step. He dramatically pointed across the room to a Soviet
official, Georgi Korniyenko, and declared, "You, Mr. Korniyenko,
are responsible for this. Mr. General Secretary, this man is
not doing what you want. He is not working in your best
interests."

Reagan, drawn into playing good cop to Shultz's bad, turned to
Gorbachev. "This is a first for us," he said. "Our
predecessors have not accomplished a helluva lot. Let's you and
I work together" at solving the remaining obstacles. The two
leaders should not let themselves get bogged down by squabbling
aides. "To hell with the rest of them," he snapped. Gorbachev
agreed. The two men shook on it.

Late into the night, exhausted aides (one presidential adviser
had slept two out of 60 hours) found the detail work to be hard
going. The U.S. wanted to call for a 50% reduction in
"comparable nuclear systems."  The Soviets, whose earlier arms
offers had counted nuclear weapons quite differently from the
U.S., continued to balk. Finally, at 4:45 a.m., nebulous
compromise language was reached:  a 50% reduction to nuclear
arms "appropriately applied."

The two sides at last had a deal that left the U.S. delegation
wearily satisfied. The Soviets had wanted to make Geneva an
"arms- control summit" to focus attention on Star Wars. The
fact that the statement addressed other issues as well, however
fleetingly and blandly, was regarded as something of a victory
for Reagan. For the first time, the Soviets had agreed to call
for substantial cuts in offensive weapons without simultaneously
insisting on a ban on Star Wars. Indeed, SDI was barely alluded
to in the joint statement. The aim of the arms-control
negotiations, it declared, should be "to prevent an arms race
in space and to terminate it on earth."  The words were the
exact ones first used last January by Shultz and former Soviet
Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko (who was left back home in
Moscow) to paper over the sharp differences between weapons and
get arms negotiations under way.

Finally, as fine flakes of snow powdered the gray morning sky
on Thursday, Reagan and Gorbachev broke their public silence
and converged on the drab concrete bunker in Geneva that serves
as an international conference center to tell the world what
their private fireside summit had produced. Their report was
modest. As Gorbachev put it in a brief, formal statement, the
talks had failed at "solving of the most important problems
concerning the arms race."  He cautioned, "If we really want to
succeed in something, then both sides are going to have to do
an awful lot of work."  Nonetheless, Reagan declared,
U.S.-Soviet relationships had been given "a fresh start."
Indeed, the two men, while avoiding false optimism, managed to
project sincere goodwill as they smiled and grasped hands.

Each man put his own gloss on the joint statement. To Reagan
the issue was "Will we join together in sharply reducing
offensive nuclear arms and moving to nonnuclear defensive
strengths for systems to make this a safer world?"  Countered
Gorbachev:  "We must not let the arms race move off into space,
and we must cut it down on earth."

The two leaders broke little new ground on other issues facing
them. While reaffirming their longstanding commitment to halt
nuclear proliferation, and pledging to make progress on ongoing
talks aimed at reducing conventional forces in Europe and
outlawing chemical weapons, they offered no guidance on how
these goals would be achieved. Despite the Soviet practice of
avoiding the topic of human rights, the statement offered some
bland language that "the two leaders agreed on the importance
of resolving humanitarian cases in the spirit of cooperation."
The summiteers announced they would carry out an agreement,
signed earlier, that was aimed a improving air safety in the
North Pacific, and thus avoiding a repetition of the Soviet
downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983. Negotiations to
resume direct air service between New York City and Moscow got
hung up on technicalities like establishing proper ticketing
procedures between Aeroflot and Pan Am, which were finally
resolved later in the week. There was also an agreement to set
up new consulates in New York and Kiev. More vaguely still, the
two leaders expressed plans to "consult" on specific programs
for cooperation on environmental preservation and nuclear
fusion research.

The one agreement actually signed by the two superpowers at the
concluding ceremony on Thursday will re-establish educational,
scientific, cultural and athletic exchanges that were dropped
by President Carter when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in
1979. Reagan has expressed his hope that such
"people-to-people" communication will led to better
understanding between East and West.

For all the lack of specifics, both sides pronounced themselves
satisfied with the summit, and Reagan and Gorbachev toasted
peace, their staffs and each other farewell with a glass of
champagne. Before heading off to brief the heads of the Soviets'
East bloc satellites, assembled in Prague, Gorbachev managed to
get in a few parting propaganda points at an unusual 1 1/2-hour
press conference. He sternly warned that "all restraint will be
blown to the winds" in nuclear competition unless the U.S. pulls
back from its antimissile defense efforts.

Reagan, meanwhile, headed to NATO headquarters in Brussels,
where he met with 13 leaders of the Western alliance to report
on his talks with Gorbachev. The West Europeans evinced
considerable relief that the summit had gone as well as it did.
Caught in the middle, they had grown apprehensive about the
deep superpower chill during Reagan's first term. "Now, after
Geneva, there is no need for pessimism," proclaimed West German
Chancellor Helmut Kohl. "I am an optimist."

Reagan's last stop in a 21-hour day was on Capitol Hill. Still
buoyant, he arrived by helicopter from Andrews Air Force Base
to a cheering, stomping joint session of Congress. "I can't
claim we had a meeting of the minds on such fundamentals as
ideology or national purpose, but we understand each other
better," Reagan declared. "That's key to peace."

Most legislators enthusiastically agreed. But a few cautioned
that the hard work is still to be done. "He's setting himself
up for having to produce," noted Wisconsin Democrat Les Aspin,
chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. "That looks
like a tall order." Scoffed Jimmy Carter's arms-control adviser,
Paul Warnke, "The music was much better than the lyrics. There
wasn't much substance to the words."

Reagan and Gorbachev had a shared interest in putting the best
face on their meeting. When American and Soviet leaders go to
a summit, they are loath to come back with nothing to show after
months of mounting expectation. Failure risks disappointing,
and perhaps losing, domestic and international constituencies.
"The pressure to succeed is enormous," says William Hyland, the
editor of Foreign Affairs and, as a former aide to Henry
Kissinger, the veteran of numerous summits. "These guys don't
want to go into a session like this and then have to explain why
it was a mistake."  Gorbachev, although he appears to have
consolidated his power and changed the nature of the way the
plodding Kremlin bureaucracy operates, needed to impress the
surviving gerontocrats back in Moscow, like Gromyko. "Those guys
went to summits with Americans and managed to come home with
treaties and agreements--at least with communiques," says one
Moscow-based observer of the Kremlin. "Gorbachev had to show
he could do it too. He didn't want to go to the next Politburo
meeting and look Gromyko in the eye and explain why the summit
was a downer and why he'd come home empty-handed."

Few leaders have been able to communicate their confidence and
essential optimism more infectiously than Ronald Reagan. But
his power of positive thinking, while it lifts national morale,
has not served to cure every problem. Faith in supply-side
growth, for example, has done nothing to slow the runaway
federal deficit. By insisting that he can at once proceed with
SDI while persuading the Soviets to make deep reductions in
strategic weapons, Reagan may be engaging in even more wishful
thinking.

The U.S. has come to a critical juncture in its rivalry with
the Soviet Union. With Reagan's firm advocacy of SDI, the U.S.
stands poised to embark on the most extravagant military project
ever conceived, perhaps the most far-reaching since the Bomb was
born in the desert near Los Alamos 40 years ago. It could
change forever the nature of the nuclear threat; it could force
the Soviets into serious bargaining. It also has the potential,
at least for the foreseeable future, to cripple any efforts at
arms control.

At the next summit meeting, little more than eight months away,
it will not suffice for Reagan and Gorbachev to declare that
they have achieved a better understanding of each other. The
pressure will be on them to produce results, or risk letting the
hope of arms control forever slip away. At the very least, the
fact that they will soon be meeting again, with the whole world
watching once more and by then hoping for more than just smiles
and handshakes, will help concentrate the minds of Reagan and
Gorbachev and their advisers, and force them to face some hard
and historic choices.


* Including his old standby about optimism, oddly appropriate
for the occasion, which tells of the Pollyannaish boy on
Christmas morn who starts shoveling a large pile of manure and
cheerfully notes, "There must be a pony in here somewhere."

--By Evan Thomas.  Reported by Laurence I. Barrett, Johanna
McGeary and James O.  Jackson/Geneva


--------------------------------------------------------- Fishy
Problem

Maison de Saussure, the 18th century Geneva estate where the
Reagans stayed during the summit, is normally the home of Prince
Karim Aga Khan IV, spiritual leader of the Shi'ite Ismaili
Muslim sect, and his family. When they graciously vacated the
twelve-room villa, their son Hussain, 11, left a note asking the
President to please feed his pet tropical fish, which were left
behind in the boy's bedroom near the second-floor master suite.
Reagan, who used the room as a study, got a kick out of
Hussain's note and took pleasure in feeding the fish. Thus it
came as quite a blow when he came in one morning and found one
of them dead. A distraught President promptly dispatched an
aide to replace the fish with exactly the same species--not
just one, but two. With Hussain's bowl thus enhanced, Reagan
wrote a note apologizing for the untimely death and expressing
hope that the substitutes would make amends. A spokesman for
the Aga Khan's family said the fish did not die of starvation.