100. Telegram From the Consulate in Germany to the Department of State1
18953. For the Secretary from Whitehead. Subject: My Visit to Moscow
1. (Secret—Entire Text).
2. I’ve had a very constructive 45 hours in Moscow with solid progress to report on both the human rights agenda for the summit and the Moscow Embassy problems.
3. Dick Schifter, Jack Matlock and I spent a total of five hours with Adamishin and an hour with Shevardnadze on human rights. Gary Matthews, Mike Joyce and I spent an hour with Bessnertnykh on Embassy Moscow. In between we squeezed in an emotional hour with some 40 or 50 refuseniks and separated families, visits to the Kremlin and Red Square, the impressionist paintings at the Pushkin Museum, and a magnificent performance of Giselle at the Bolshoi.
4. The Soviets announced settlement of another separated spouse case today. The third in a week, leaving only six on our list.
5. At the human rights meetings with Adamishin, we challenged them to make progress prior to the summit on our whole range of issues: 1) resolve the remaining cases of divided spouses, blocked marriages, dual nationals, and “special interest”; 2) resolve the remaining “old refuseniks” cases, the number of which is now down to about 6,000, and stop denying emigration on the basis of unreasonable allegations about access to state secrets and unreasonable vetoes by relatives; 3) stop intimidating emigration applicants, and accept applications only from those with close relatives already abroad; 4) give amnesty to all political and religious prisoners and amend their criminal code to remove provisions for such arrests and imprisonments; 5) regularize other areas, e.g., to allow religious classes and Hebrew language teachings, to stop censoring telephone calls, mail and packages. Adamishin said they would take these concerns under consideration. On Jewish emigration he said they have no quotas, but are not approving departures only for those with first-degree relatives. He also quoted an astonishingly low figure for applications for Israel now under consideration, and I told him this would be a problem. I also made the point that now that they have contacts with Israel, we welcome their bilateral discussion of Jewish emigration.
[Page 296]6. After setting out a number of things they would like to see us do unilaterally, they came forward with a quite remarkable list of proposals for future interaction, some of which we have proposed to them in the past without success. These included 1) set up periodic meetings between high-ranking government officials to discuss humanitarian questions; 2) exchange information on the laws of both countries as they affect human rights; 3) establish direct contacts between their Ministry of Internal Affairs and our Justice Department on operational emigration-immigration matters; 4) collaborate on the fight against drug addiction and alcoholism; 5) collaborate on the fight against terrorism at the operating level; 6) create a bilateral fund for humanitarian collaboration to finance mutual contact and exchange of information; 7) establish consultation among specialists in developing international standards for committing people to mental institutions; 8) establish yearly meetings between writers and publishers on human rights; and 9) establish meetings between legal specialists for developing international human rights standards.
7. So there is now a list of things that we want and things that they want, and another list of things we might do together, many of the latter list being things we want too. We will now reply in the next few days and will show you a draft of our reply before it goes.2 It is important that our demands be asserted in a way that does not put them in the position of always acquiescing to our demands but rather permits them to appear to be initiating steps in accordance with their own interests. To the extent that we are willing to do this, I believe we can make substantive progress. They say they don’t want to keep anyone in the Soviet Union who wants to leave and that they don’t want to imprison anyone for political or religious reasons but that we have to help them get there. There was some sense on my delegation that the Foreign Ministry may be pushing in the right directions against resistance from other agencies, and trying to use us in pre-summit circumstances to increase its internal leverage. We shall see.
8. It is too early to know what the summit can accomplish on human rights. But the indications now are that at least we can have some good progress to report.
[Omitted here is discussion unrelated to human rights.]
12. All in all it was a good visit and a good trip. All the embassies and my staff handled the complications very effectively. I’ll be back about 6:00 p.m. tonight.
- Source: Department of State, Correspondence of Deputy Secretary John Whitehead, 1982–1989, Lot 89D139, Memoranda of Conversation—1987. Secret; Immediate; Nodis.↩
- In telegram 364415 to Moscow, November 21, the Department transmitted its response to Adamishin’s proposals. (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, D870961–0032)↩