Solution-Oriented Policy

Kremlin, White House Now Realistic By Roy Gutman Moscow: A high Soviet official, ascribing a dramatic change in approach to the Reagan Administration, says US policy-makers now constitute a Pragmatic “team” that is “solution-oriented” and can work well with Mr. Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s new foreign policy. “You have realistically minded people on both sides at the moment, in the Kremlin and in the White House, that team and our team... are solutionoriented,” said Mr. Bessmertnykh, who oversees Soviet relations with the United States. Mr. Bessmertnykh, a veteran diplomat who served 12 years in the United States and is known as a leading exponent of pragmatism, emphasised that the summit affirmed a historic shift in US-Soviet relations. He asserted that an agreement on a treaty sharply cutting offensive nuclear arms is still possible this year, despite a number of unresolved issues. Mr. Bessmertnykh also claimed that Mr. Gorbachev’s new offer on conventional forces was “the most practical offer ever made.” Under the offer, NATO and the Warsaw Pact would exchange data on each other’s forces, verify the data onsite and reduce deployments where one side had superiority. He said Regan was non-committal, but Mr. Bessmertnykh urged the United state to give the idea serious consideration.