MEMORANDUM OF CONVERSATION BETWEEN GENERAL POWELL AND GEORGIY KORNIYENKO, JANUARY 28, 1988
Document Type:
Collection:
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP90M00005R000300070025-0
Release Decision:
RIPPUB
Original Classification:
C
Document Page Count:
5
Document Creation Date:
December 27, 2016
Document Release Date:
December 14, 2011
Sequence Number:
25
Case Number:
Publication Date:
February 3, 1988
Content Type:
MEMO
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_irIIIAL
NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL
WASHINGTON. O.C. 20506
February 3, 1988
fEE
MEMORANDUM FOR MR. MELVYN LEVITSKY
Executive Secretary
Department of State
Executive Secretary
Central Intelligence Agency
SUBJECT: Memorandum of Conversation between General Powell
and Georgiy Korniyenko, January 28, 1988 (C)
Attached at Tab A for your information is the subject memorandum
of conversation. (U)
Paul Schott Stevens
Executive Secretary
Tab A Memorandum of Conversation
CNTIAL
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CO TIAL 1' IHI. 0736
NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL
WASHU 4OTON. O.C. 20504
SUBJECT: General Powell's Meeting with
Georgiy M. Korniyenko
PARTICIPANTS: US
General Colin L. Powell
Fritz W. Ermarth, NSC Staff (Notetaker)
USSR
Georgiy Korniyenko (First Deputy Chief,
International Department, Central Committee
of the CPSU)
Ambassador Yuriy Dubinin
Evgeny Zolotov (Interpreter)
DATE, TIME January 28, 1988, 1:30 p.m.- 2:00 p.m.
AND PLACE: General Powell's Office
Georgiy Korniyenko visited General Powell for what turned out to
be largely a courtesy call. He opened conversation by conveying
greetings to the President from Mikhail Gorbachev, noting that he
had come as part of a parliamentary delegation but really to
visit old and new friends in Washington. He recalled that he had
worked on US-Soviet relations since 1946. He noted "by the way"
that, according to a CIA biography of him revealed after the
seizure of the US embassy in Tehran, the US had a good assessment
of his personality. CIA biographies, he observed, were objective
and "businesslike", avoiding generalities and noting a person's
strong and weak points; they were better than comparable Soviet
biographies. He then-asked General Powell to comment on pros-
pects for the INF Treaty in the Senate.
General Powell wondered how his biography in Soviet files read,
and observed, in any case, he was given to straight talk, being a
military officer, not a diplomat. He said he was highly confi-
dent of ratification of the INF Treaty, noted the applause it had
gotten during the President's State of the Union address and its
popularity in the US, Europe, and Asia. Most recently Egyptian
President Mubarak had praised it. According to our system,
General Powell continued, there would be wide-ranging debate and
careful scrutiny of every line in the Treaty, with participants
serving their own political aims. All manner of amendments,
reservations, and understanding would be proposed, the General
predicted, and he cautioned the Soviets not to overreact. In the
end, he said, the Treaty would be ratified without "killer
amendments" or anything requiring renegotiation.
L
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CONFIDENTIAL
CONFIDENTIAL 2
During the INF ratification debates, General Powell continued,
positions would be taken by the participants on the course of
START and Defense and Space negotiations. There would be close
scrutiny of all verification problems and the record of
compliance and violations, e.g., Krasnoyarsk and Gomel. The
Administration would be admonished to be most careful about
START, especially its verification, because of its direct impor-
tance to US security. (C)
As to the future of the START negotiations themselves, General
Powell said it was hard to predict. He said it would be nice to
have a START agreement to sign in Moscow, but that we should be
clear that a successful summit in Moscow would not require such
an achievement. It was vital, he said, to complete a START
agreement carefully and correctly, so as to assure its ratifica-
tion. This might take more time than we had, so we should not
define a successful Moscow summit as requiring this achievement,
lest we set ourselves up for a disappointment. If we hurried the
completion of START, critics would condemn the product for that
reason. We should work to solve remaining problems as soon as
possible, but recognize that they were difficult. We faced the
charge of a last-minute rush to complete INF. This experience,
the General continued, should instruct us to put the most diffi-
cult issues, especially verification, up front in the negotia-
tions, in Geneva, Moscow, and Washington. (C)
INF verification approaches did indeed provide a guide to START
verification, the General went on, but START would be much harder
because we had to verify limits not zero forces, to which
Korniyenko agreed. In this respect, the General continued, we
still had to reach closure on difficult issues concerning mobile
ICBMs and SLCMs; moreover, we continued to have differences on
ICBM sublimits and counting-rules. It was vital, the General
said, to do serious work on these problems and do it right. We
should put ourselves in a position such that, should we get 50
percent of the way to completion by the time of a Moscow summit,
we could legitimately call that a great success, take credit, and
carry on in the negotiations. If, on the other hand, we
displayed a rush in the negotiations to a summit deadline, then
we would run into both negotiating difficulties and serious
challenges in Senate ratification. With those concerns in mind,
he emphasized that we would give every effort to completing START
by the time of a Moscow summit. (C)
General Powell then turned to the D&S negotiations, where he also
saw difficulties. The US continued to seek a stand-alone agree-
ment rather than a protocol to something else, such as the
Soviets sought. He noted that there had arisen some controversy
about the passages in the Washington Summit Joint Statement
concerning research "as required" and permitted by the ABM treaty
CONFIDENTIAL
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CONFIDENTIAL 3
comma before this second passage. There was a problem here to
which our best minds should be applied, continued the General.
But he urged the Soviet side to be clear that the President's
commitment to and belief in the SDI program had not diminished in
the slightest, despite his awareness that Gorbachev had a different
view. Korniyenko interjected that the US should have no doubt
that Gorbachev's view was very different and he held it equally
strongly. (C)
We would have to find a way, said the General, for the SDI
program to continue and to be passed on to the next
administration intact, without being crippled by an agreement.
The General recalled that Gorbachev had granted that, at some
point, the US could follow its course and the Soviet side its own
different course. The US side would, in the meantime, do what
was permitted by the 1972 ABM Treaty "as required" by our
program, which we would describe to all. General Powell hoped
our explanations would help the Soviet side to understand our
aims and intentions better and that a way could be found in
Geneva to resolve this difficult problem. (C)
The General observed that the Soviet side had recently taken
positions in Geneva that seemed to make the situation more
difficult. For example, it sought to stipulate as allowed only
development on systems permitted by the ABM Treaty, not develop-
ment permitted by the ABM Treaty. This seemed a step backward.
Korniyenko asked whether the US draft treaty didn't say the same
thing. No, replied General Powell, the US D&S text tracked the
Joint Statement. What it meant was clear during sessions of the
December summit, among experts and between the two leaders.
Moreover, the Soviet side wanted to reserve the right to build up
strategic forces beyond START limits if the other side took
objectionable action with respect to the ABM Treaty, with or
without a Defense and Space agreement. This would be most
difficult to ratify. General Powell then asked for Korniyenko's
comments. (C)
as signed in 1972." Korniyenko interjected that there was no
Korniyenko shared the General's assessment of the INF ratifica-
tion picture. But he found the situation in Geneva most puzzling.
He agreed that the most serious difficulties were in Defense and
Space. The Soviet side took the view that the best defense in
this strategic area was no defense. The US side took a different
view. The meaning of the Washington Summit, according to
Korniyenko, was that we would stop trying to convince each other
and simply live with the ABM Treaty for an agreed period. The US
draft D&S agreement, however, had to be seen as a plain attempt
at converting the Soviet side to the US view; its very title
referred to a "transition" to greater reliance on defensive
capabilities. This was a conceptual reversal of the Washington
outcome. This was very puzzling to the Soviet side. The US had
put itself in a conceptual position that made agreement impossible
and from which it would be hard to retreat. (C)
CONFIDENTIAL
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CONFIDENTIAL
In the START area, Korniyenko continued, after we had simplified
the matter of sublimits, the US now returned with more sublimits
and sub-sublimits, regarding, for example, ICBMs with six or more
warheads. He agreed that SLCMs too remained a difficult problem. (C)
Regarding SLCMs, the General responded that the problem was
verification. Although the Soviet side claimed to have the
technology for doing this, we were very doubtful about this. (C)
As General Powell hurriedly departed for a meeting with the
President, he asked Kornivenko whether Soviet withdrawal from
Afghanistan remained independent of the creation of a transition-
al regime in Kabul. Korniyenko replied that it did. (C)
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