Looking At A Summit

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In order to sign a treaty on intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles a summit between President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev will take place. The summit will be held in the fall of 1987.

-- Joint U.S.-Soviet statement issued last week

There have been summits before, of course, but this one will be something special. After nearly six years of tense and frequently stormy on-and-off negotiations, the superpowers that share the awesome ability to blow up the world will have an actual commitment for their leaders to solemnize. So the next summit will not be a mere smile-and-handshake affair, like Geneva in 1985, or an inconclusive wrangle, like Reykjavik last year. Instead, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev intend to sign a pact that will for the first time eliminate a whole class of modern nuclear weapons and, just maybe, begin to turn the U.S. and U.S.S.R. away from their arms race. Where will they meet? In the U.S., it seems clear, undoubtedly beginning in Washington. Exactly when will Gorbachev come calling, and how long will he stay? Details, details, the superpowers appeared to be saying. Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, meeting in Washington last week, refused to get bogged down in the fine points. They agreed to have an Intermediate- Range Nuclear Forces treaty ready for signing at a summit and to push lower- level negotiators to cross the last t's and dot the last i's in the course of the next month or so. That agreement to agree met the condition Gorbachev had imposed ever since Reagan, at Geneva nearly two years ago, invited him to visit the U.S.: he would come only if assured that he and the President could transact some major business.

Nailing down that assurance took 10 1/2 hours of talks between Shultz and Shevardnadze stretching over three days, an unscheduled call by the two on Reagan in the White House Thursday evening, and a cable later that night from the Soviet embassy to the Kremlin seeking Politburo approval. (Gorbachev presumably sent his O.K. from the Black Sea coast, where he is vacationing.) By Friday morning, reporters were summoned to the White House to hear the momentous news.

First, aides handed out a written joint statement announcing an "agreement in principle to conclude a treaty." Negotiating teams in Geneva, said the statement, have been instructed to complete a full draft text for Shultz and Shevardnadze to review when the Secretary visits Moscow next month. "Exact dates" for the summit will be settled then too.