Moscow's Promising Offer

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That was a new tone for the Administration. Reagan and his aides had been complaining for months that the Soviets were shoveling out propaganda in public while stonewalling in Geneva. As last week began, it appeared that both sides might indulge in more of the same.

Shultz and Shevardnadze addressed the U.N. General Assembly at the beginning of the world body's celebration of its 40th anniversary. The American spoke first, on Monday, presenting a predictable defense of U.S. positions across the global board. Anticipating that his opposite number would again accuse the U.S. of making space a potential battlefield, Shultz pointed out that "the Soviets have the world's most active military space program." It was time to cool the propaganda, Shultz said with an air of impatience, "so let's get down to real business, with the seriousness the subject deserves."

The next day, Shevardnadze also seemed eager. "There is no more time to waste," he said of nuclear negotiations. Much of Shevardnadze's hour-long talk consisted of moldy condemnations of the U.S. as the source of all the world's tensions. But Shevardnadze has the knack of sounding temperate while talking tough--an ability he shares with Reagan, along with an ear for catchy slogans. Thus he coined the term Star Peace as the Soviets' antidote to Star Wars, which the Reagan Administration prefers to call the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Star Peace is a recycled version of a previous Soviet proposal for cleansing space of military hardware under international supervision. One senior Reagan aide dismissed it as "really hokey."

If the Americans thought Shevardnadze's rhetoric unedifying, they, along with U.N. diplomats, found the rhetorician to be personable (see box). In the long initial meeting with Shultz on Wednesday, neither side broke any fresh ground. But the new Foreign Minister came across as positively genial compared with his unsmiling predecessor, Andrei Gromyko. Shevardnadze even apologized to Shultz for having been absent from the General Assembly chamber when the Secretary of State spoke ("I have such a tight program, it is very difficult for me to operate"). Said one participant in the discussions: "The decibel level is lower, and there was real discussion back and forth. The atmosphere was not bad." The easier style was reflected in an exchange prompted by Shultz. In telling reporters of the Friday schedule, he unintentionally got a laugh by saying that after Reagan saw Shevardnadze in the Oval Office, "he had him for lunch." When a Soviet spokesman, Vladimir Lomeiko, briefed the press, he began by saying, "As you can see, we are alive and well."

Meanwhile, a tantalizing harbinger of movement had already come not from New York or Washington but from Geneva. On Sept. 19 the Soviet delegation there formally requested two "joint plenary sessions" to take place this week. Since March, each side has been divided into three teams by subject: strategic offensive weapons, intermediate-range missiles and defensive technology (including space-based systems). They want a joint meeting of all the groups, the Soviets said, to present a "major exposition." Last week it became clear that this would be their new plan.