Foreign Minister Van den Broek, who visited Moscow, said that Gromyko seemed unwilling to make any concessions or any effort to understand the Dutch point of view.

For a month Ronald Reagan had been playing something of an unaccustomed role: the overanxious suitor. At nearly every opportunity, he betrayed his eagerness to meet with his Soviet counterpart. Two days after Mikhail Gorbachev was named Soviet Communist Party leader, Reagan invited him to a tete-a-tete in theā€¦