U.S. News reports an unnamed European diplomat remarking, condescendingly, that “Gorbachev will swallow Reagan within half an hour” of their meeting. . . . Henry Kissinger begs to disagree. In an interview with John McLaughlin, Kissinger commented that Gorbachev was “too clever by half” in his heavy-handed Paris grandstanding on nuclear disarmament. If Reagan sticks by his guns in respect to SDI, says Kissinger, “he may end up with a major agreement with the Soviets.” . . . You can’t fool the American people all the time. While 83 per cent of them approve a Reagan-Gorbachev meeting (NBC News poll), 69 per cent doubt that an agreement will be reached on arms control and 74 per cent feel that even if it is, the Russians cannot be trusted to abide by it. . . . “If they ever give an Oscar for bad timing,” writes Mary McGrory, “there is no need to ask for the envelope. President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua will be the winner going away.” Miss McGrory was referring to the Sandinista ban on civil liberties in Nicaragua a week before Ortega was scheduled to address the UN General Assembly, and, of course, to his prior high-visibility visit to Moscow that resulted in a congressional turnabout on aid to the Contras. . . . Yasir Arafat is not far behind in the bad-timing stakes. The Achille Lauro affair caused six Third World nations to drop a bid to have him address the UN.
Some summit preparations: Sandinista secret-police chief Lenin Cerna is already cracking down on political opponents. He has in past week interrogated Erick Ramirez, head of the Social Christian Party, and two other political leaders, and warned them against “issuing press releases.” … In Gdansk, Lech Walesa has been charged with slandering the government by issuing Solidarity election-turnout figures to Western newsmen; he faces two years in jail if convicted. . . . At the UN, Pakistani President Mohammed Zia Ul-haq, the man closest to the scene, says the Soviets now have 150,000 troops in Afghanistan and that they, and their Afghan puppets, have suffered sixty thousand casualties in the six-year war, and are getting nowhere. Sooner or later, says Zia, Gorbachev will realize there is no military solution to the Afghan question. . . . Der Spiegel hints negotiations are under way for the release from prison and internal exile of Soviet dissidents Anatoly Shcharansky and Andrei Sakharov and for their deportation shortly after the summit.
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