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Along with his report to Washington on the "walk in the park," Nitze sent a comment saying that he considered it essential to inform America's NATO partners, especially West Germany, of what had happened, and to make clear that the proposal had been a Soviet initiative. The reason: Nitze was afraid the Soviets would leak the substance of the conversation and make it look like a Nitze idea. If the Reagan Administration then rejected the scheme, as expected, West Europeans would think that Washington had disavowed its own negotiator. U.S. officials took Nitze's advice and on Nov. 15 notified the governments concerned.
On Nov. 16, Nitze received the instructions he had expected: to turn the Soviet offer down flat.
The next day Soviet ambassadors in London, The Hague, Brussels, Rome and Bonn fanned out with official letters asserting that Nitze had presented a new proposal calling for a reduction of SS-20s in Europe to 120 in exchange for cancellation of the entire NATO deployment. Nothing was said in the letter about Soviet concessions on the issue of British and French forces. Just as Nitze had feared, the Soviets were transparently attempting to make the "walk in the park" appear to be a replay of the celebrated "walk in the woods." In July 1982, Nitze had privately worked out a potential breakthrough with Kvitsinsky, only to have the scheme repudiated by Washington and Moscow alike. Had the latest ploy worked, it could have sowed confusion in the West German parliament just as it was about to vote on the missile issue.
On Saturday, Nov. 19, Nitze called Kvitsinsky to the U.S. headquarters in Geneva for an angry confrontation. "Washington, and I personally, find unacceptable Soviet attempts, in direct approaches to our allies, to misrepresent the informal Soviet suggestion of Nov. 13 as an American proposal," Nitze declared. Kvitsinsky became obdurate. It had been a U.S. proposal, he insisted. "All this has been turned into a filthy thing by someone," Kvitsinsky charged. Thus ended the testiest encounter in two years between two men who had, despite the sadly deteriorating relationship between their two governments, managed to maintain a respectful, professional rapport. "Everything is finished," Kvitsinsky said as he hurried out of the building.
Had Kvitsinsky made a genuine eleventh-hour effort to find common ground for an agreement and subsequently been disavowed by his own government? Or had he engaged in a cynical and deceptive Kremlin ploy to trap Nitze and divide the U.S. from its allies? The answer may never be known.
Even without that murky incident, the West German debate over the Pershings would have been passionate. Now it was all the angrier. During the stormy discussion, which was demanded by opponents of deployment, 51 deputies argued for more than 27 hours. The final outcome was never in doubt, since the center-right coalition of Chancellor Helmut Kohl had a 58-seat majority. But the bitterness of the discussion brought West German divisions into sharp focus. After three decades, a bipartisan consensus on defense and foreign policy had fallen victim to the missile issue.