The Washington Summit : For First Time, a High Soviet Officer Gets Inside Pentagon

The Kremlin’s second-ranking military official, Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, met Wednesday with top U.S. defense officials in the Pentagon and discussed a proposal for mutual reduction in long-range nuclear weapons and U.S. and Soviet plans to build defenses against missiles in space.

The afternoon meeting, in Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci’s office, lasted more than an hour and marked the first time a senior Soviet military officer had set foot inside the Pentagon, U.S. officials said.

In a brief picture-taking session before the meeting, Akhromeyev was asked whether the two sides had made any progress this week on START, the strategic arms reduction talks.

“The first sign of progress is the signing of the medium-range and shorter-range missile (treaty),” the Soviet official said through an interpreter, referring to the agreement signed Tuesday. “And the second indication of progress is the mutual desire on both sides shown today to seek progress and to achieve progress in the field of reducing strategic offensive arms. I emphasize so far the desire and the seeking to do so.”

Akhromeyev, 64, is the Soviet Union’s first deputy defense minister and chief of the general staff. He is one of the Soviet Union’s top arms control experts and a close adviser to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

He was dressed in civilian clothes and was accompanied to the meeting by several aides.

Akhromeyev is to return to the Pentagon this morning for another meeting with Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the other service chiefs. He will not, as the Pentagon had announced, be shown the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon’s nerve center. Instead he will meet with the chiefs in their secure conference room, down the hall from the command center.