By now the scene has been played so often—four trips to eleven nations in the past ten weeks alone—that it has taken on an atmosphere of, "If this is March, then it must be Moscow." The big, blue and white Boeing 707, with the seal of the President of the United States emblazoned on its door, wheels and whines to an airport ramp. As local officials rush forward, the door swings open, and out pops a wavy-haired, rather pudgy man (185 Ibs. on a 5-ft. 8-in. frame), with the unmistakable aura of a true celebrity. Adjusting his glasses and his smile, the visitor speaks in a solemn baritone, the scholarly English sentences laced, to the puzzlement of some, with the Germanic accents of his native Fürth. But the audiences listen carefully. The hopes, fears and future of his own country and the world may well depend on whatever is about to transpire.
It is March, and it is Moscow. Early Sunday evening, Air Force Two was scheduled to roll up to a ramp at Vnukovo airport as U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, 50, arrived on his sixth and potentially most important visit to the Soviet Union since he became the foreign-policy plenipotentiary of Richard Nixon's Administration. In the Russian capital, the policymakers of the two ranking superpowers were to review a number of issues that affected not only East-West detente but the entire world.
Items on the agenda:
1) SALT II, or a continuation of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. Since the signing in May 1972 of the SALT I agreement, which limits offensive weapons and anti-ballistic missiles, the Soviets have tested four new intercontinental ballistic missiles and have developed their first submarine-launched multiple warhead missile. The Pentagon, meanwhile, as part of a record $85.8 billion budget request, included items to improve missile accuracy, guidance and control that are also meant to prod the Soviets into a formula for "essential equivalence" in missiles and payloads. At a predeparture press conference in Washington last week, Kissinger indicated that the two nations had passed the stage of technical exchanges and were "at the point where we should be making, or should be attempting, a conceptual breakthrough on arms limitation agreements."
2) TRADE. Both the Soviets and U.S.
industry are anxious to increase U.S.-U.S.S.R. trade, but the credits and most-favored-nation status that Moscow seeks are both bottled up in Congress. Amendments to pending trade legislation, notably including one sponsored by Democratic Senator Henry ("Scoop") Jackson of Washington, tie M.F.N. status to a nagging political question and one which is directly tied to Jewish emigration to Israel—the right of Soviet citizens to leave the U.S.S.R. without harassment or penalties. Kissinger firmly insists that emigration is a domestic Soviet issue, and he has fought all efforts to tie it to the trade legislation that he considers essential to detente.