Shultz Looks Back at Talks: ‘Overall, I Think It’s Been a Pretty Good Week for Us’

For Secretary of State George P. Shultz, the 10 days of intense negotiations that ended the Daniloff crisis and set up next week’s Iceland summit were the essence of what diplomacy is all about.

“Overall, I think it’s been a pretty good week for us, and I hope they (the Soviets) may feel the same way,” Shultz said.

After 40 years of Cold War tension and suspicion, that assertion may seem impossible. For a generation, U.S.-Soviet relations have been seen as a zero-sum game where the gains of one side are mathematically equal to the losses of the other.

But in Shultz’s world, skillful negotiators can produce results in which both sides win. In practice, President Reagan’s anti-Communist outlook sets the tone for Administration foreign policy but Shultz’s pragmatic belief in negotiation establishes the technique.

Despite grumbling in U.S. law enforcement and intelligence circles that he conceded too much, Shultz is said by people close to him to be thoroughly satisfied with the complex package negotiated with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze to free U.S. journalist Nicholas Daniloff.

State Department officials say that both sides compromised their original positions to make the deal, which also called for President Reagan to meet Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Iceland on Oct. 11-12, allowed an accused Soviet spy to return home, freed a veteran Soviet dissident from Siberian exile and finessed a dispute over U.S. accusations that Moscow was using its U.N. Mission as a spy center.

Downward Spiral

“Both sides were staring into a deep canyon as relations spiraled down as a result of the Daniloff case and other matters,” one State Department official said. “Both sides wanted to pull back from the edge. Now Daniloff is behind us and all of the prospects are before us.”

The official said that “both sides had to back off some” to produce what he called “a good real-world solution.”

Many conservatives, including staunch supporters of Reagan’s anti-Communist views, were appalled by the result. These people labeled it a craven surrender to a blatant Soviet tactic of seizing an American hostage as trade bait for a Soviet spy who was caught in the act.

And sources in the American law enforcement and intelligence communities said that the compromise solution to the dispute over the Soviet U.N. mission will allow the New York station chiefs of the KGB secret police and GRU military intelligence unit to remain.

Regardless of the merits of that argument, however, the way the Washington-Moscow crisis was resolved through almost 24 hours of talks illustrates Shultz’s approach to diplomacy. A skilled labor bargainer long before he became a diplomat, Shultz has demonstrated repeatedly that he is prepared to negotiate anything with anyone provided the other party is willing and able to keep its side of the deal.

According to officials familiar with Shultz’s thinking, the secretary considers the Soviets to be an ideal negotiating partner, despite the wide philosophical gap between Washington and Moscow. That is because when the Soviet government agrees to do something, it usually can do it.

Won’t Redeem Promises

By contrast, Shultz has virtually given up on negotiations with Libya, Nicaragua and the various militias and political bands in Lebanon because he has found they are either unwilling or unable to redeem their promises.

A State Department official said that the reliability of the other side is far more important than abstract principles about refusing to negotiate with groups that hold hostages. That is a factor in the United States’ willingness to deal with the Soviets over Daniloff and its unwilling to consider concessions to Lebanese terrorist groups to obtain the freedom of U.S. hostages.

“We did pull back from some wild rhetoric about how we will not negotiate for a hostage,” the official said in describing the Daniloff case. “That’s rubbish now, it was rubbish in the Middle East, it’s just plain rubbish.”

Shultz took personal charge of the latest round of Washington-Moscow talks.

After an initial round of meetings in Washington on Sept. 19 and 20, Shultz and Shevardnadze met four times at the United Nations before the deal was wrapped up Sunday.

Although one government source said that Shultz sought and obtained additional negotiating latitude from Reagan before the climactic Sunday meeting, the State Department official said that both Shultz and Shevardnadze had a great deal of authority from the start, although both had to clear important points with their superiors.

In the end, he said, both sides could point to important concessions.

From Washington’s standpoint, the most important objectives were to free Daniloff without forcing him to undergo an espionage show trial, to put U.S.-Soviet negotiations on arms control and other issues back on track and to obtain a Soviet promise to reduce the size of its U.N. Mission.

Moscow’s primary objectives, the official said, were to secure the release of Gennady F. Zakharov, the Soviet U.N. employee accused of espionage, speed the negotiations on arms control and obtain relaxation of a U.S. order expelling 25 members of the Soviet U.N. mission.

Both sides achieved their primary objectives, the official said. In the case of the U.N. Mission, it was a Solomonic compromise in which both sides could declare victory.

The Soviets promised to reduce the size of their U.N. Mission by 40% over the next 18 months as the United States had demanded. But Washington acquiesced in the Soviet demand to substitute other names for some on the list of 25 in the first of four semi-annual reductions.