Nation: On to the Summit in Vienna

A historic treaty and a first meeting between rivals

After seven years of negotiations that ended in the announcement of agreement on a SALT II treaty on May 9, U.S. and Soviet diplomats in Geneva still had to work late every night last week on that very same treaty. Their task: to get the final Russian and English terms of the 76-page document into shape for Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev to sign next Monday in Vienna. Alternating between the drab Soviet mission near the U.N.'s Palais des Nations and the more spacious U.S. quarters overlooking the botanical garden and Lake Geneva, U.S. Envoy Ralph Earle and the Soviets' Victor Karpov found that the final dotting of z's and crossing of fs was unexpectedly difficult. Lamented one U.S. official: "We still don't know when the work will be finished."

Would it be done in time for the enounter that the whole world will be watching?

Said the American: "It better be."

The delay caused SALT critics in Washington to fear that the Soviets might be trying to shade some nuances in their favor. Senate G.O.P. Leader Howard Baker Jr. warned darkly about the pressures of "deadline diplomacy." But an Administration official insisted that there was no cause for concern. Even so, the two leaders may yet have to settle some of the fine print during their face-to-face sessions this weekend.

In contrast to the feverish activity in Geneva, summit preparations went on almost serenely in Vienna, where the treaty is to be signed at 1 p.m. in the Redoutensaal, a gold-and-white ballroom in the sprawling Hofburg, the Habsburg dynasty's Imperial Palace. Vienna officials were taking the summit preparations very much in stride. The Redoutensaal was occupied last week by negotiators at the interminable M.B.F.R. talks on troop reductions in Central Europe. Not until this week could workmen begin erecting bleacher seats for the 1,200 journalists expected to witness the SALT II signing. That the agreement on nuclear weapons will be signed in the Hofburg seemed fitting: the palace was a headquarters of the 1814-15 Congress of Vienna, which achieved a balance of power in Europe that lasted for nearly a century. SALT II will expire in 1985, but by then U.S. and Soviet leaders hope a more lasting agreement will have been negotiated.

In Moscow and Washington, where Brezhnev and Carter were being prepped by their staffs for the summit, the biggest uncertainty was the health of the ailing Soviet party chief (see ESSAY). Brezhnev seemed in good shape two weeks ago during his visit to Budapest, where he declared: "We shall go to Vienna fully prepared for an active and constructive dialogue." In Moscow, Andrei Kirilenko, who as the party's Central Committee Secretary-General is No. 2 to Brezhnev, told U.S. Ambassador Malcolm Toon that both countries expected "a great deal" of the summit and expressed the hope that both would make "great efforts." A Soviet official told TIME: "While we can hope for frequent summits, we don't really know when the next one might be. So the American Government should at least try."