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Bush dined with Belgium's King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola at their Laeken Palace. Next day he attended a round of closed meetings with NATO officials, including Secretary General Joseph Luns. Bush met in Geneva with the Soviet Union's top arms negotiators, Yuli Kvitsinsky, who heads the INF team, and Victor P. Karpov, the START leader. Karpov said the meeting was useful in "clarifying positions." In a speech to the United Nations Committee on Disarmament, Bush challenged Soviet negotiators to "come up with your plan to banish these INF missiles."
The other traveling George, Secretary of State Shultz, faced a less demanding task in Tokyo, where Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone had only recently returned from a cordial trip to Washington. Still, Shultz found the issue of Euromissiles much on the mind of his host. Partly because the U.S. has urged Japan to play a larger role in the military security of the Far East, Nakasone has depicted his island as "an unsinkable aircraft carrier" and called the Soviet Union his nation's major foreign threat. Japanese leaders thus worry about any Geneva deal under which the Soviet Union would agree to move some of its missiles into Asia rather than dismantle them. Shultz reassured Nakasone that the zero option calls on the Soviets to dismantle all 243 of its SS-20s in Europe as well as the 99 already in Asia. Shultz vowed that U.S. negotiators would never "do something that is good for Europe but not good for Asia." While that may have comforted Nakasone, giving Japan a virtual voice in the European missile debate could severely restrict U.S. flexibility in Geneva.
Then it was on to China, where Shultz said the purpose of his four-day visit to Peking was simply to "correct misunderstandings—or at least to talk out what our differences are." He and his Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian, spent eight hours doing just that. Wu put an arm on Shultz's shoulder at one point and declared, "And now we are friends." Shultz also had a talk with Premier Zhao Ziyang and with China's top leader, Deng Xiaoping. That meeting, which lasted 2½ hrs., was described by Shultz as "penetrating and worthwhile." Differences over Taiwan, trade and relations with developing nations were discussed candidly but left unresolved. Shultz apparently cleared the way for Premier Zhao to visit Reagan in Washington later this year. A return trip by Reagan to Peking did not seem likely.
At a rare press conference with American reporters, Zhao said bluntly that "the main obstacle [to better U.S.China relations] is the question of Taiwan." On that issue Shultz and Zhao both refused to give ground. Shultz insisted that the U.S. could not go beyond Reagan's "Taiwan Communiqué" issued last August. It promised that the U.S. will gradually reduce arms sales to Taiwan at an unspecified pace and quantity, a pledge far too vague to satisfy China, though not so vague as to alarm Taiwan.