 Let me just state the ground rules very briefly. The President will be first. He will be on the record, brief opening remarks, Q&A for 15 minutes, followed by the Secretary of State, the same thing, Don Regan, the same thing, and will be over in an hour. We'll have a transcript available in Room 45 for everyone here, and we are going to release the transcript today to the press out there in the White House press room at about 6 o'clock. Mr. President? All right. Please sit down. And welcome to the White House. It's a particular pleasure to have you here so soon after returning from a meeting with General Secretary Gorbachev and that meeting marked new progress in U.S.-Soviet relations. For the first time on the highest level, we and the Soviets came close to an agreement on real reductions of both strategic and intermediate-range weapons. For the first time, we got Soviet agreement to a worldwide figure of 100 intermediate-range warheads for each side, a drastic cut. For the first time, we began to hammer out details of a 50 percent cut in strategic forces over five years. We were just a sentence or two away from agreeing to new talks on nuclear testing. And maybe most important, we were inside of an historic agreement on completely eliminating the threat of offensive ballistic missiles by 1996. I can help remembering being told just a few years ago that radical arms reduction was an impossible dream, but now it's on the agenda for both sides. I think the first thing that's important to do is to put these talks and what occurred into perspective. You'll recall that just over a week ago in talking about going to Iceland, I said that we did not seek nor did we expect agreements. We described our trip as a base camp before the summit to be held here in the United States. And if there was a surprise in Reykjavik, it was that we discussed so much and moved so far. No one a week ago would have thought there could have been agreement in so many areas. While we didn't sign a document and there remained significant differences, we must not mistake the absence of a final agreement for the absence of progress. Historic gains were achieved. As you know, after a great deal of discussion, our talks came down to the Strategic Defense Initiative, SDI. I offered a delay, deployment of advanced strategic defense for 10 years while both sides eliminated all ballistic missiles. But General Secretary Gorbachev said that his demand that we give up all but laboratory research on SDI, in effect kill the program, was non-negotiable. And now the Soviets have made a strategic defense program for years. They've breached the ABM Treaty. And as I noted last night, may be preparing to put in place a nationwide ABM system. For us to abandon SDI would leave them with an immediate permanent advantage and a dangerous one, and this I would not do. Abandoning SDI would also leave us without an insurance policy that the Soviets will live up to arms reduction agreements. Strategic defense is the key to making arms reduction work. It protects us against the possibility that at some point when the elimination of ballistic missiles is not yet complete, that the Soviets may change their minds. I'm confident that the Soviets understand our position. They may try to see if they can make us back off our proposals. And I am convinced they'll come back to the table and talk. So here's how I would sum up my meeting with Mr. Gorbachev in Iceland. We addressed the important areas of human rights, regional conflicts, and our bilateral relationship. And we moved the U.S.-Soviet dialogue on arms reduction to a new plane. We laid a strong and promising foundation for our negotiators in Geneva to build on. And I'm disappointed, of course, that Mr. Gorbachev decided to hold all agreements hostage to an agreement on SDI. During our Geneva summit we agreed to move forward where we had found common ground, especially on a 50 percent reduction in strategic arsenals and an INF agreement. I hope he'll at least remember that commitment in the next few weeks, because for our part we'll seek right away in Geneva to build on the dramatic progress that we made in Iceland. Now, I think you have a few questions. Mr. President, who's going to do the charcoals for Mr. Gorbachev, and one more friend of Soviet leaders with whom you had had dealings? Do you stand by that characterization, or do you think Mr. Gorbachev is perhaps engaged in a little duplicity in the right to say it? Well, I'm not going to use the word duplicity there, but I do say, having had an opportunity these past several years and before him to speak to, well, not their outright leaders, their general secretaries, because they kept disappearing, talk to other Russian leaders. And I think the very nature of the talks that we had in this one, and the fact that we were finding ourselves in agreement, and the extent to which we would disarmament him, that yes, he was more open than I have experienced before. And it wasn't until we then got down to this proposal of theirs with SDI that we ran into a roadblock, and finally, and he made it plain then, that everything that we'd been talking about was contingent on our agreeing to that one, that one phase. But there's no, I'm not saying to you he's an easy mark in any way, he's totally dedicated to their system, and frankly I think he is, I think he believes sincerely their propaganda about us, that we're beholden to industrial and military complexes and so forth. Mr. President, now that you've left that phase clear, is the summit a, how important right now is this summit that was originally scheduled for after the election? Is there a chance that it will be a summit, or does it matter? Well, he brought up the matter of summit and referred to it several times as if he was expecting to be here for the summit. I have to say that our negotiators, arms negotiators have gone back to Teneba. All of these things have gone with them, and it contains all of the notes and memorandums from all of the meetings as to the extent of the agreement that we had reached with regard to the various types of missiles and so forth. And so I have to believe as they continue to look at that and see that there was only one major point of disagreement that we had that I, I'm going to continue to be optimistic. Because it will be a precedent on the subject of the one sticking point that was loomed so large and began, you can just explain to us your reasons for the way you handled it on one point in particular. When it became apparent that all of the concessions that you know, Secretary Grosjeff was willing to make in the opposite area were contingent on this demand with regard to SDI, did you feel that you had an option of saying, we'll get back to you? We'll study this. We'll, we'll turn it over to our experts. I'll give it some more thought. If you had that option, you clearly didn't take it, you decided to make clear to him then and there and subsequently in public that you were rejecting it. Why was that necessary, particularly given the fact that you told us here only a week or so ago that no great agreements were expected out of this meeting? It's not as though we were all out there waiting for you to come out with either a big agreement or a big dispute? No, actually, as a matter of fact, he himself from the very beginning had said that what we were talking about is the necessity for coming to some, to some agreements that would then lead to being able to sign things and finalize things at the forthcoming summit. So actually, we progressed in those discussions farther than I think either one of us had anticipated we would. And with SDI, I think that is the absolute guarantee. First of all, I'd pledged to the American people that there was no way that I would give away SDI. And looking at their own record, the ABM Treaty, they're in violation of that now. Now, the ABM Treaty, which he kept referring to as if it was the holy grail, I asked him once what was so great about a treaty that had our government saying to our people, we won't protect you from a nuclear attack. That's basically what the ABM Treaty says. On the other hand, we know and have evidence that they have been going beyond the restrictions of the ABM Treaty with their Krasnoyarsk radar, which shows the possibility of being able to provide radar-directed missiles in a defense not just for one spot, Moscow, as the treaty had provided. We never, of course, took advantage of the fact that we could defend one spot. We didn't think that was a very practical idea, but that they are embarked on a strategic defense initiative of their own. And we feel that, first of all, there are other countries, other individuals that now that everybody knows how to make a ballistic missile that could be in that are, well, some have them already, others developing. It's true that we are the two that endanger the world most with the great arsenals that we have. But this would be the guarantee against cheating. You wouldn't have to be suspiciously watching each other to see if they were starting to replace missiles. This would be the guarantee against, in the future, a madman coming along. I have likened it, and I explained it to him in this way, that right after World War I, and I reminded him, and I was the only one there old enough to remember these times, the nations got together in Geneva to outlaw poison gas. But we kept our gas masks. And thank heaven we did. As now, years later, poison gas is being more and more recognized as a legitimate weapon. Are you saying, sir, that he left you no choice but to say yes or no there on the spot that you had no option to say, very interesting, we'll study it, we'll get back to you? There wasn't any need of that. There wasn't any way that I was going to back away from that, from SDI. Are you confident that we are going to have another shot at you? I can't say that I'm confident that I have any practical evidence other than the fact that he, several times, referred to the forthcoming summit that would take place here in the United States. The only mention I made of it at all was at one point, I asked him legitimately, I said, would you like to propose a date, suggest a date for that forthcoming summit? And at that time, his reason for not doing it, he said, was because, well, until we, our people have all worked things out and we know about how long it's going to take to make the plans for the summit, why I think we should wait on naming a date. And that was the last time that it was mentioned. Were you not after the deadlock or before the deadlock? Oh, that was before the deadlock, yes. And as President, I'm puzzled about something. You two gentlemen, you saw for nearly 11 hours, obviously there was harmony between you two. And yet, in the final analysis, SDI became a major hangout. I get the impression that all along, Mr. Gorbachev never indicated to you that this was hanging back there in the dark. And my question is, was he simple? I'm not going to use that word to say that, because where this came up was both of us, finally at a point, proposed that on Saturday night that our teams take all of these voluminous notes that had been taken in all of the meetings and discussions with all of the things that had been discussed. And they go to work that night, and they did, and they worked all night. In two groups, well, I mean, there were two, their groups and our groups, but two on each side, one of our groups was dedicated to putting together all the discussion that we'd had on human rights and regional conflicts and so forth. They worked till, as I understand it, about 3.30 in the morning. And the other group was to go through all the things to come back and find where had we really been in agreement, where there was no problem between us, and where were the sticking points that had not been resolved. And I guess that group worked till about 6 in the morning, didn't they? And then Sunday we went into that, what was supposed to be a two-hour meeting and wound up being an all-day meeting. They brought back to us, put together the things that we had all proposed and that seemed that we could agree on and the places where we were stuck. And that was the first time really that it became evident about SDI, because what I had proposed early on was what I talked about here. I told him that what we were proposing with SDI was that once we reached the testing stage we would, well, before that, that right now we were ready and willing to sign a treaty, a binding treaty that said when we reached the testing stage that both sides would proceed because we told them, frankly, that we knew they were researching also on defense, nor was that ever denied. And we said we both will go forward with what we're doing. When we reach the testing stage, if it's us, we'll invite you to participate and see the test. And if it develops that we have and or I said, or if you have perfected a system that can be this kind of defense that we're talking about, then we share so that there won't be one side having this plus offensive weapons, but that we eliminate the offensive weapons and then we make available to all who feel a need for it or want it, this defensive system so that safety is guaranteed for the future. I don't want to use the word to see, but I still puzzle you, it seems to me that you wouldn't agree with Mr. Gorbachev as you agreed, if you'd known that once you got to the amount of dollar he would sprain this all on SDI or nothing at all. Well I think this came out of the summary then that came back from our teams to us where all of this was put together in a kind of an agreement. And what they were denying SDI openly, what they were doing was framing it that in such a way that in a ten year delay they would literally kill SDI and there just wouldn't be any. I'm trying to remember all the things that were said, it was just that they were adamant that and the use of words, it came down to the use of words and their words would have made it, not just a ten year delay but would have meant that we would come to the end of the reducing the weapons and we, well SDI would have been killed and we proposed wording that the research that we were carrying on would be carried on within the provisions of the ABM treaty and this wasn't good enough for them. The law says I'm through here but you can take them up at the Secretary of State. Alright thank you very much.