GENEVA SUMMIT-US Climb-Down on Bilateral Economic Relations

January 18, 1986 GENEVA SUMMIT US Climb-Down on Bilateral Economic Relations R G Gidadhubli THOUGH the Reagan-Gorbachov summit in Geneva has apparently not produced positive results on substantive issues such as the arms race, the star wars programme, etc, one area in which there are prospects of improvement in relations between the two countries is that of bilateral trade. Reagan may have reason to be happy that he succeeded, among other things, in persuading Gorbachov to buy more grain from the US, since the Soviets had hardly contracted for grain imports from the US market since mid-1985. In fact, as per the report of the US Department of Agriculture on 4USSR Grain Situation and Outlook' for October 1985, the Soviet Union had imported only 8,000 tonnes of grain from the US during July-August 1985 in contrast to 1.5 million tonnes in the corresponding months in 1984. The apprehensions of US policy-makers that the Soviet Union might not buy much grain from the US were possibly confirmed by the fact that the mission of John Block, the US Secretary of Agriculture, to Moscow in September 1985 did not yield any positive response from the Soviet side.