Ambassador Grinevsky on Soviet Negotiations    

  A professional diplomat, Oleg Grinevsky led the Department of Mid-Eastern Affairs, USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from 1978 through 1983. During the next two years, he served as the Soviet Ambassador to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Then, in 1985, he became the Chief Arms Control Negotiator for the USSR for the CFE Treaty. For the next five years, he worked directly with President Mikhail Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Shevardnadze to negotiate the treaty.
     
On Soviet leaders and the concept of on-site inspections: "In December 1985, Gorbachev had a one-on-one with each of his arms control negotiators. He wanted to start 'real negotiations' with 'real reductions' in armaments to make Europe and the world less militarized and less dangerous. During the time of [Conference on Disarmament in Europe] negotiations in Stockholm, I suggested that we accept one or two on-site inspections every year of Soviet forces because it would convince the West of our good intentions and [it] would not harm our military position in any way."

On resistance within the Soviet Politburo: "In the meetings on arms control, the sides were generally Gorbachev, Shevardnadze, Yakolev, and Grinevsky against Marshal Akhromeyev, the KGB chief, the Director of the Central Committee's International Department, and the Military Departments. Marshal Akhromeyev was the key member of the Politburo who opposed the CDE measures. As the head military officer, his ideas were important and persuasive. But he was very 'explosive' and would speak out forcefully on his views.

"The Politburo met on weekends. I would return from Stockholm and present the results of that week's negotiations. The arguments were heated. Usually, they took the form of my introducing a proposal and, if it was unacceptable, Akhromeyev would 'explode,' explaining that the proposal endangered the military security of the state. Gorbachev would then step in and 'mediate' the dispute, making sure at the end that everyone on the Politburo agreed. This happened on the discussions on the on-site inspection measures, and that is how it was resolved."

  On Gorbachev and Soviet participation in the more radical arms control treaty negotiations: "First of all, there was the economic situation in the country. The USSR needed time and resources to improve its economic situation...Second, to do this we had to improve relations with the West to reduce tensions, to make economic relations easier by getting rid of the West's biggest fear, the size and power of the Soviet military forces in Europe. We wanted to change our military profile in Europe and reduce our dominance over Eastern Europe.

"We actually succeeded, especially after the CFE Treaty, which, by the way, only Shevardnadze really supported. Shevardnadze realized that only after this treaty would the USSR be safe from a Western attack. The country would be able to save resources from the conventional force reductions to use elsewhere.

"Conventional forces are very expensive, and the money saved would be considerable. But virtually all of the others opposed the CFE Treaty because the USSR would be giving up its 'overwhelming military advantage' in Europe. They could not visualize a Soviet Union that did not have a huge and powerful military, even if it meant better living conditions for the people."
Source: Interview, Colonel Kenneth D. Guillory, U.S. Army, March 14, 1994.  

 

Ambassador Hansen on U.S. Negotiations

Lynn M. Hansen was the U.S. Ambassador to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1992-93. In 1989-90, he served on the U.S. delegation negotiating the CFE Treaty. Educated at Utah State University, Hansen was a Fulbright Scholar to the Free University of Berlin. The recipient of an M.A. and a Ph.D., he is fluent in German, Dutch, Swedish, and Russian. Currently, Ambassador Hansen is Vice Chairman for Evaluation, National Intelligence Council.

 
     
On the Bush administration's decision to pursue the CFE Treaty: "The United States made the decision to push the treaty sometime in 1989. It began in March 1989, but there was a little bit of time before they really made the decision that, by golly, we are going to get this agreement. They brought in Jim Woosley [as Chief Negotiator], and I came with him. That was in November 1989. It was precisely the time when the Berlin Wall came down."

The INF Treaty as a precedent: "The INF experience was both a positive and negative model for us. It was positive insofar as we and the Soviet Union had an experience which we shared, and we knew what had to be done. But this very fact was resented by some, particularly by the French, who took some pains to make sure that we did not use INF terminology very much. But since it was the only experience anyone had, we still used it. So, it was very, very important to us in terms of methodologies and procedures....

"Clearly there were two things that influenced us. One was, of course, the INF Treaty. The second was the shared experience everybody had with the Stockholm Agreement. That was a European-dominated experience, and it was very, very important. I think it was every bit as important to the Europeans and to the negotiation of the CFE Treaty as was the INF Treaty. Thirty-five nations had shared in that experience, but only 23 were in the CFE negotiations--and all of them had been involved in the Stockholm Agreement, every one."

   Negotiating the final CFE Treaty verification issues: "As we proceeded through negotiations we were able to resolve most of the issues up until October 1990. We were within a month of treaty signing and didn't have the basic question of a site versus an object of verification resolved. It was the basis for calculating the number of inspections, and what we were to inspect. In October 1990, the Russians paid a visit to Washington. A small team of us took Soviet Ambassador Grinevsky into a room in the State Department and we talked about the CFE Treaty, specifically verification.

"The [U.S.] interagency community, or more accurately, decisionmakers at a high level, had decided that they would accept the Soviets' object of verification concept, provided the Soviets would agree to the way it would be implemented. We put this proposition to Ambassador Grinevsky. He indicated that he wanted the appropriate people involved. We requested that he send his verification negotiator to the U.S. He called him over. His name was Gennadiy Yefstaviyev. We met in New York. The idea was that while the UN First Committee was in session, we would attempt to resolve the final parts of the CFE Treaty.

"I arranged my room in the Waldorf Astoria to be a little negotiating room. As it turns out, only I and Yefstaviyev used it. One on one, we wrote out the final parts of the verification protocol, which included the concept of object of verification and access to the declared sites. We also developed the definition of a declared site and other definitions which have stood the test of time rather well.

"Basically, we did it this way. My negotiating style was to write everything down. Then, these texts were given to Mr. Shevardnadze and Secretary Baker. They would meet, discuss, and bless them. By the time that New York meeting was over, we had, for all intents and purposes, an agreement on the verification protocol."
Source: Interview, Joseph P. Harahan, OSIA, December 14, 1993.  

 

   Consequently, throughout 1990, the Central European Warsaw Pact nations, specifically Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria, continued to negotiate as a "group of state parties," although most believed that the Warsaw Pact would dissolve by the end of 1991. In the negotiating sessions, these nations took positions that reflected their independent national status, but in the final treaty text and implementing protocols, they agreed to retain the terminology of bloc-to-bloc limits and zones. Since Soviet military forces were still withdrawing from Eastern Europe, no nation wanted to impede this withdrawal. This deliberate political act allowed the basic framework of the treaty to remain in place while the East European nations strengthened their new independent governments.19

By October 1990, most major treaty provisions, protocols, and statements had been agreed to; however, the basis for calculating the number of inspections had not been determined. The United States argued that the location of treaty-limited equipment (TLE) and military units, known as a "declared site," should be the basis for calculating the number of inspections. The declared site was what an inspection team would inspect. The Soviets countered that the number of inspections should be based on the "objects of verification" (OOVs). The OOV was a declared military organization that held equipment limited by the treaty. An OOV could also be a designated permanent storage site that held TLE not associated with a specific unit, or any location, where TLE would be found routinely. The Soviet position was that a team would inspect the OOV-the organization, storage depot, or location and its TLE, not the entire site where they were located. For many, this distinction was difficult to understand; yet, it was important to the Soviet High Command because they colocated many military organizations at a single location. The Soviet Army often had several OOVs on a single declared site. Here was a major disagreement, declared site versus OOV, and neither the NATO nations nor the Warsaw Pact nations were willing to compromise.

 

In an eleventh-hour effort, American CFE Treaty negotiator Lynn M. Hansen and Soviet CFE Treaty negotiator Gennadiy Yefstaviyev held a series of meetings in the weeks and days before the treaty was signed.20 There was little time for extended deliberations. President Bush had stated that he would not attend the Paris CSCE Conference, scheduled for mid-November 1990, if a CFE Treaty was not ready for signature. Time was running out; in late October Ambassador Hansen met with Ambassador Grinevsky and others at the U.S. State Department to resolve the impasse. Their solution recognized the OOV as the item for inspection, but also granted inspectors access to the entire site except for areas belonging exclusively to another OOV. Declared site areas that were not part of an OOV, were colloquially referred to as common areas. This ambiguous solution resolved a treaty negotiating impasse, but it created problems later during treaty implementation.

Long before this issue would surface during actual on-site inspections, the treaty text and protocols had to be finalized, signed, and ratified. To complete the treaty, Soviet CFE negotiator Yefstaviyev went to New York, where he and the American negotiator Hansen developed the final segments of the inspection protocol. They in turn persuaded members of their respective blocs in Budapest and Brussels to accept the negotiated provisions. However, this U.S.-USSR agreement came at a cost. These end game negotiations brought to a head a belief held by many of the other signatory states: the two superpowers, the United States and the USSR, were resolving too many issues bilaterally. From this point forward, the CFE Treaty negotiators from the European states began meeting among themselves. A stronger "European" perspective on the CFE Treaty and its implementation began to emerge. Despite this development, the march toward final agreement continued. After delegates agreed to all of the final provisions, the CFE Treaty was ready for signature.

CFE TREATY SIGNATURE

In mid-November 1990, the three-day meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe convened in Paris. The leaders of 22 nations, including Bush, Gorbachev, Kohl, Mitterrand, and Thatcher, signed the CFE Treaty on November 19, 1990. At that point, the signatory states included Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Turkey, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and the United States. Amidst all the historic changes sweeping across the European continent, the CFE Treaty constituted a new legal and diplomatic framework for reducing military forces and limiting national aggression in post-Cold War Europe.21

  

 

Leaders of CSCE nations at the November 1990 Paris Summit.

   The CSCE Conference's political and diplomatic dimensions were revealed the next day as the leaders of 34 states signed the Charter of Paris for a New Europe.22 This charter codified statements on human rights, democratic values, and the rule of law for all European states and peoples. At the same session, leaders of the 16 NATO nations, 6 WTO nations, and 12 neutral and nonaligned European nations pledged to seek a nonconfrontational security structure for all of Europe. That structure began, of course, with their endorsement of the objectives of the CFE Treaty. Next, they agreed to establish and strengthen CSCE institutions.23 A new, small CSCE Secretariat would be established in Prague; a CSCE Conflict Resolution Center would be set up in Vienna, and a new CSCE Election Monitoring Office would be located in Warsaw. At the same time, the 35 national leaders affirmed their commitment to follow the provisions of the Vienna Document 1990, an important new cross-European confidence and security building measure that expanded the provisions of the earlier Stockholm Document of 1986.24 The new Vienna Document 1990 stipulated annual exchanges of military force data, regular military-to-military contacts, and on-site inspections as confidence and security building measures. When the three-day CSCE Conference concluded, it was seen as another significant step in the transition to post-Cold War Europe.

 

President Bush, in his remarks to the 69 assembled presidents, prime ministers, and foreign ministers, cited the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 and the courage of the European peoples who worked to implement the CSCE objectives. He noted that three of the European leaders present, the presidents of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria, had been jailed or persecuted for exercising their rights under the Helsinki Act. President Bush asserted that the treaty was the military dimension of the CSCE process and that it was "the most far-reaching arms agreement" ever negotiated.25 In his remarks, President Gorbachev praised the CFE Treaty and called for action on the other arms control treaties then under negotiation, especially in the areas of strategic nuclear weapons.26 When they spoke, both Chancellor Kohl and President Mitterrand took a longer, European view. In the last 200 years, Kohl said, "Europe, and my country in particular, became the epicenter of worldwide catastrophes." Now, he declared it was time for European peace. Mitterrand observed that for the first time in European history the massive changes occurring across the continent were "not the outcome of war or bloody revolution."27

Between the hyperbole and the history lay the signed CFE Treaty. But before it could enter into force, it had to be ratified. That process would take nearly two years; in the interim, the treaty became the subject of intense scrutiny by those responsible for implementation.

 

Now, Chancellor Helmut Kohl declared, it was time for European peace.

 

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