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Karpov and his colleagues also hinted at some new flexibility on strategic weapons. Only a month ago they were insisting that no new weapons be added to either nation's strategic arsenal. But now the Soviets have indicated that they might agree to one additional new weapon in each leg of the strategic triad (land-based, seabased and airborne), which would allow the U.S. to proceed with its modernization program.
The Soviets have also indicated that they might now accept a written limit on throw weight. In addition, they offered last week to stop construction on a giant phased-array radar in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. This facility has been cited by Reagan's defense team as a major Soviet arms-control violation because such installations are permitted only along borders under the terms of the 1972 ABM treaty. In return for halting work on the nearly completed radar, the Soviets demanded that the U.S. stop upgrading two advance-warning radar complexes in England and Greenland, neither of which falls under the provisions of the ABM treaty. Said Under Secretary of Defense Fred Ikle, one of the Pentagon's hard- liners: "They're offering to trade what is clearly a violation for two radars that are fully permitted under the treaty."
Perhaps in response to Reagan's recent admonishments on human-rights abuses, Moscow made its offer to allow Bonner, 62, an exit visa to seek medical treatment in the West. She and her husband Sakharov, a distinguished physicist, are kept in "internal exile" in Gorky, an industrial city 250 miles from Moscow. In a telegram received by a friend on Friday, Bonner indicated that she would probably not leave until the end of the month-- after the summit is over.
When the U.S. formally received the details of the latest Soviet offer, the Administration found itself faced with two questions: a tactical one of whether to make a response before the summit, and a substantive one about what any response should contain. As usual, the Administration split into naysayers, led by Weinberger, Perle and others at the Pentagon, and dealmakers, with Secretary of State George Shultz, other State Department officials, Arms Control Adviser Paul Nitze and National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane at the fore.
/ In some ways, the substantive debate was the easier one. "Two weeks ago," said one participant, "we knew what the American position could be." This may have been partly owing to the feeling among Perle and other Pentagon hard- liners that no deal was possible because of the Soviet insistence on curtailing Star Wars. Advocates of an agreement had hoped that Moscow would find some way to paper over the issue, at least for the moment, by accepting an American affirmation that it would continue to adhere to the ABM treaty. But Perle and others damaged that possibility by pressing within the administration for an interpretation of the ABM treaty that would not forbid development of space-based defense systems.