251. Memorandum From the Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State (Timbie) to Secretary of State Shultz1
Attached are materials for your meeting with Shevardnadze this morning:
1. The draft START Text.2 It is quite good, and incorporates real advances in throwweight, ballistic missile warhead counting rules, and telemetry encryption. Akhromeyev says he will give us an answer on one bracket in the ALCM counting rule (“nuclear-armed”) in the morning, and give us the Soviet SLBM warhead numbers at the same time. If Akhromeyev removes the bracket, this will represent another major step toward our position.
Unfortunately, after we saw you last night Akhromeyev added a phrase to the SLCM paragraph which we bracketed. It commits the sides to establish ceilings on SLCMs, and confine them to certain classes of ships. In our view, the unbracketed language committing us to seek effective methods of verification of SLCM limits is as far as we can go at this time, and we cannot commit to limits until the verification is in hand. Akhromeyev says there will be no START agreement without SLCM constraints, so he would recommend against the START statement if the bracketed sentence is not included.
The guidance in the NSDD is to seek Soviet views on how SLCM limits could be verified, which we have done. Colin planned to take this subject up with the Chiefs, and you might touch base with him before you see Shevardnadze. Akhromeyev will be seeing Crowe in the morning, and their conversation could be helpful.
Points to make:
—We have studied verification of SLCM limits.
—Have not found anything that would give us confidence.
[Page 1127]—Therefore cannot commit to limits on SLCMs.
—We have agreed to take another look at the verification question.
—Let’s see what we come up with. If we find something, we can revisit this issue.
2. The START Issues Sheet3
3. The draft Defense and Space Text.4 There are a number of brackets. The Working Group could have dropped the pair of brackets dealing with what happens after the period, and the two bracketed unilateral statements on conduct during the period. They have been left in to give you a basis for discussing these two subjects with Shevardnadze and making clear to him our position, and give you an opportunity to work in Gorbachev’s comment about the sides being free to do what they please after the period. (We do not have access to the memcons tonight, so we don’t have the language Gorbachev used.) Whenever you wish, you can drop all the brackets except the first. If you want to capture the thought of the “as required” sentence, these words can be added to the first sentence. (The package includes both a clean copy and a markup Bob Linhard has done for Colin.)
The first bracket is the hard one. The Soviets will not want to back away from the October 30 language (“observance of and non-withdrawal from the ABM Treaty for an agreed period”). The language in the bracket moves away from non-withdrawal toward non-deployment, the direction we want to go. There will be much unhappiness if the qualification in the first bracket were dropped. (Conversely, Karpov suggested dropping all the bracketed language, and you may hear that again.)
4. The Defense and Space Issues Sheet.
5. The October 30 Joint Announcement5
[Page 1128]- Source: Department of State, Bureau of Arms Control and Disarmament, Lot 01D127, 1969–1990 Subject Records of James P. Timbie, Box 1, START/INF 1987. Secret.↩
- Attached but not printed. See Attachment, Document 250.↩
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- No classification marking.↩