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A similar lack of assertiveness was evident when Shevardnadze gave his maiden speech to the conferees. He read his 25-minute address woodenly and slowly, raising his eyes to his audience only four times. His tone was quiet and moderate, but in terms of content the speech could easily have been written by his unbending predecessor, Gromyko, now Soviet President. Pleading for a return to détente, Shevardnadze launched into a predictable litany of accusations against the U.S. for deploying intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe, for "violating" Strategic Arms Limitation treaties and for pushing ahead with the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars, "by whatever means." Discussing human rights, one of the cornerstones of the Helsinki Accords, Shevardnadze declared, "Our country has not allowed and will not allow anyone to interfere in its internal affairs." Said a senior U.S. official: "The positions he described were all quite familiar to us."
Shultz devoted the bulk of his 20-minute speech to another familiar topic: U.S. displeasure with Moscow's human rights record. He named 22 Soviet citizens victimized by Moscow over the past decade. Among them were Nobel Laureate Andrei Sakharov, Physicist Yuri Orlov, Dissident Anatoli Shcharansky and more obscure citizens like Yuri Balovlenkov, whose "crime" was to marry a U.S. citizen.
Beneath the surface, however, both speeches stressed the need for cooperation by the superpowers. "We will have to obtain peace," said Shevardnadze. "The U.S. and the Soviet Union have an opportunity to help build a more secure world," said Shultz.
The next day, during his private meeting with Shultz at the U.S. embassy residence, Shevardnadze was accompanied by Anatoli Dobrynin, longtime Soviet Ambassador to Washington, and several other aides. (Later it was learned that Dobrynin will soon leave his post in Washington, where he has been Ambassador for the past 23 years, to become one of Shevardnadze's top deputies in Moscow.)
Once seated across the table from Shultz, Shevardnadze visibly relaxed. Both men were aided by an innovation for such talks, simultaneous translation. As a result, Shultz said later, "we accomplished in three hours what would have otherwise taken six."
The substance of those accomplishments was more difficult to define. By and large, the two men laid out their countries' positions on major issues dividing the superpowers and agreed on those that would appear on the agenda of the November summit. According to the U.S. side, the program would include four categories: 1) arms control and security, 2) regional conflicts such as Afghanistan, Kampuchea and Central America, 3) bilateral matters, including trade and cultural exchanges, and 4) human rights. But Soviet officials asserted that only three categories would be discussed; human rights did not appear on the Soviet list.