U.S., Soviets Open Meeting on Trade Talks

U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce Lionel Olmer and his Soviet counterpart, Vladimir Sushkov, opened talks Tuesday that could lead to a resumption of trade negotiations between the two superpowers.

They are the first high-level U.S.-Soviet trade discussions since December, 1979, when exchanges were halted after the Soviets sent troops into Afghanistan to help that nation’s Marxist government battle anti-Communist rebels.

“The purpose is to determine whether there should be a meeting of ministers of the Joint Commercial Commission and if so, what might the agenda for that meeting be,” Olmer told the Associated Press after greeting Sushkov at the start of Tuesday’s session.

U.S. trade officials have said that they would propose that a meeting between Soviet Foreign Trade Minister Nikolai S. Patolichev and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige be held in Washington in March. Soviet officials reportedly want a June meeting in Moscow.

Olmer declined to say what date or location he would propose for such a meeting if he and Sushkov agree that such a conference “would be a good idea.”

Sushkov made no comment during the brief photographic session arranged by the U.S. Embassy.

Opportunities Exist

The government newspaper Izvestia said “much will depend on how constructive an approach is taken by the American side in search of a way for improving mutually beneficial trade relations.”

Tass, the official Soviet news agency, said earlier that the United States has fallen from second place to seventh on the list of Soviet trade partners among developed capitalist countries since 1979, “not through the fault of the Soviet Union.”

“Trade turnover between the two major industrialized powers of the world is far behind their potentialities and has been virtually stagnating during the past six years,” Tass said.

Olmer said he doubted that the United States ever ranked No. 2 among Soviet trading partners but agreed that there is sufficient opportunity for improving business ties.