*-ON THE SUBJECT OF THE AFTERMATH OF THE ASSASSINATION OF THE SWEDISH PRIME MINISTER, BEARING IN MIND WHAT YOU FIND IF YOU TAKE A BRIEF SIDESTEP HERE, THEN TAKE YOUR NEXT FOOTSTEP HERE.Associated Press
WASHINGTON-U.S. State Secretary George Shultz has notified the Soviet Union that only private diplomacy--not public proposals for summit meetings--will break the stalemate in U.S.-Soviet arms control talks.
"Until that happens, we're not going to get anywhere," Shultz said after the Reagan administration rejected a proposal by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to meet with President Ronald Reagan and negotiate a ban on all nuclear weapons tests.
As he returned home Sunday from a 10-day trip to France, Turkey, Greece and Italy, Shultz complained that U.S. and Soviet proposals on weapons reductions had been aired publicly. He said he wanted "to get somewhere in our relations with the Soviets where we're able to have some discussions that are relatively quiet and direct."
Shultz told reporters private diplomacy produced the "fireside summit" Reagan and Gorbachev held in Geneva last November. There, they agreed to a "new start" in trying to curb nuclear weapons race and in dealing with U.S.-Soviet disputes.
But, Shultz said, "It's probably a measure of the lack of progress recently that all the actions are through press statements, publicly rather than privately."
To illustrate his point, Shultz cited what happened when he met Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov in Stockholm after the funeral of the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in early March.*
(text of March 31, 1986 Vancouver Sun article)
*-ON THE SUBJECT OF THE AFTERMATH OF THE ASSASSINATION OF THE SWEDISH PRIME MINISTER, BEARING IN MIND WHAT YOU FIND IF YOU TAKE A BRIEF SIDESTEP HERE, THEN TAKE YOUR NEXT FOOTSTEP HERE.