Shultz-Gromyko Talks Run Overtime as Session Opens : Both Men Joke With Reporters

Secretary of State George P. Shultz and veteran Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko met for nearly seven hours today--an hour longer than scheduled--in the first substantive arms talks between the superpowers in more than a year.

Other than two public displays of good humor, there was no indication of progress.

The aim of the two-day conference is to chart new formal negotiations to reduce the nuclear arsenals of the superpowers and to avert a space war. The Soviets had abandoned nuclear missile talks in Geneva in late 1983 to protest the deployment of U.S. cruise missiles in Europe.

Shultz met first with Gromyko at the Soviet diplomatic mission and the session lasted 3 1/2 hours, an hour beyond schedule. After lunch, Gromyko went to the American mission for a second meeting that lasted nearly three hours.

Jokes Exchanged

When he arrived at the American mission, Gromyko smiled and waved to newsmen. Then he and Shultz laughed and joked about note taking at conferences.

Late in the day, at a reception given by the American delegation, the two principals in the long-awaited talks engaged in banter witnessed by reporters and photographers.

Shultz personally escorted Gromyko into the reception, held in the American mission after the second round of talks. The two men smiled and appeared relaxed after their long day, and when photographers called on Gromyko to turn around and face their cameras, Shultz cut in to say: “We have this convention when we go into a room. He (Gromyko) goes to the left and I go to the right.”

Replies in English

When a reporter started to ask Gromyko a question, he stopped him, saying in English: “No interviews. No fair.”

The atmosphere was good-humored and relaxed.

But meanwhile, hundreds of reporters waited in vain for officials to tell them what had transpired during the talks. American officials had indicated earlier today that there would be a briefing, but later word went out to the contrary.

When he arrived at the American mission for the afternoon session, Gromyko waved and smiled to newsmen and then was escorted into the building by Arthur A. Hartman, U.S. ambassador to Moscow, and Paul H. Nitze, chief arms control adviser to Shultz.

Then, during a two-minute photo session, Shultz and the often stern Gromyko engaged in highly animated banter on the subject of conference note-taking.

Reporters did not catch all of the exchange, but it started when someone asked the 75-year-old Gromyko, who was holding a note pad, “Have you got that in your notes?”

Gromyko held up his pad and tore off the top page, saying, “Perfectly right.”

Then Shultz joined in decribing how a labor arbitrator he once knew would “write furiously on the right side of his note pad and every once in a while make notes on the left-hand side.”

Shultz said the arbitrator explained that he took down what people said on the right side and on the left recorded his thoughts and impressions. “When he was finished, he had a running analysis of the talks,” Shultz said.

Both Gromyko and Shultz laughed, and then entered the negotiating room.

They were joined on the American side by Hartman, Nitze, Robert C. McFarlane, White House foreign policy adviser Jack Matlock, a member of the National Security Council staff acting as note taker, and Carolyn Smith, interpreter.

Also on the Soviet side were Anatoly F. Dobrynin, ambassador to Washington; Georgi Kornienko, first deputy foreign minister; Victor P. Karpov, the senior arms control negotiator; Alexander Bratchikov, note taker, and Victor Sukhadrov, interpreter.

Late in the day there was no indication from either delegation as to the substance of their conversations.

A third and final session was scheduled for Tuesday morning, but the two sides remained ready to continue meeting Tuesday afternoon if the need arises for a more detailed examination of the tangled maze of issues on the table.

Shultz and Gromyko had arrived in Geneva on Sunday and both issued mild, conciliatory arrival statements, shorn of invective or demands.

Shultz said he had come to Geneva “on a mission for peace,” and with a “positive and constructive attitude.”

Gromyko said he was aiming “at peace and removing the threat of nuclear war.”

Gromyko mentioned what he said was the need to “prevent an arms race in outer space,” but unlike some other Soviet officials did not make this a condition for progress on other nuclear subjects.

There have been high expectations in the United States and Western Europe for dramatic results from the Geneva conference, but U.S. officials have tried to dampen those hopes.

One senior Administration official said, “Our foremost purpose in Geneva is to come to terms on format, procedures, for formal follow-on talks.”

It would only be during those new talks that the hard bargaining over arms control would resume.