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The progress in Geneva had been heralded by early signals that the Soviets and the U.S. were eager to thaw the frosty legacy of the Moscow meeting. The week before Vance arrived in the Swiss city, chief U.S. SALT Negotiator Paul Warnke and his Soviet counterpart, Vladimir ("Iron Pants") Semyonov, moved closer to an agreement on a number of the so-called secondary issues (TIME, May 23). Then Vance and Gromyko deliberately launched their own talks on an upbeat note by signing an extension of a treaty to cooperate in space science and medicine and to exchange data on missions to the moon. The two men even tried to foster cordiality by a little banter in the presence of newsmen. As lightning flashed among the Alpine peaks across Lake Geneva, Vance said to Gromyko: "Did you hear those thunderbolts? I was throwing them at you." Gromyko chuckled gamely.
Much of last week's progress may have been the result of a change in Vance's style. Shelved, at least for Geneva, was the wide-open diplomacy that had so irritated the Soviets during the ill-fated Moscow meeting. Vance avoided almost all contact with the press in Geneva. So, of course, did Gromyko. As he and Vance posed for photographers beneath a big portrait of Brezhnev at the Soviet mission, a reporter asked him how the talks were going. Said Gromyko: "We are silent like fish." Equally pleasing to the Soviets must be the recent low-decibel level of the Administration's human rights drive.
On small matters last week, Vance seemed determined to accommodate the Soviets. The American delegation, for instance, wanted to talk first about the situation in the Middle East and then about SALT; the Soviets wanted the agenda reversed. Result: they began with SALT. Normally, each superpower is host to alternate SALT sessions; the Soviets complained, however, that the Americans' quarters in the Inter-Continental Hotel were too likely to be bugged by the agents of some other country. Result: the Soviets were hosts to the negotiations on SALT, while the delegates repaired to the Inter-Continental for two hours of talks on the Middle East (see cover stones).
This series of concessions was a key element of Vance's negotiating tactics. Reports TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott from Geneva: "There was a consensus among American policymakers that the U.S. made a mistake by putting the Kremlin on the defensive before and during Vance's mission to Moscow. Therefore the Americans decided to. let the Soviets recapture some initiative and prestige. By yielding on procedure, protocol and publicity, U.S. officials hoped for a trade-off in the form of greater Soviet flexibility and receptivity at the negotiating table."
Vance's tactics apparently have had some success. But SALT "breakthroughs" have been heralded before, only to come to naught. Indeed, as he was about to depart for Moscow, a sour Gromyko cautioned that his discussions with Vance were "just a station along the way ... major and serious difficulties remain." Some of these difficulties will be attacked this week as Warnke and Semyonov resume their talks. The toughest issues will undoubtedly require higher-level bargaining; thus Vance and Gromyko plan to meet again, on a yet undetermined date.