- II -

complex political process. The Soviets also remain by far the major source of arms to the Third World, and most of these are bartered or sold for hard currency.<sup>1 7</sup> Yet outlines for a strategy to *unblock" the resolution of regional conflicts are becoming clear.

28. Senior Gorbachev advisors say that the first element in the new policy toward regional conflicts should be to disentangle them from the Cold War zero-sum mind-set of U.S.- Soviet relations. Foreign Ministry officials, analysts at the International Department of the Central Committee and at the Academy of Sciences Institutes, eagerly talk about possibilities for resolving regional conflicts through joint or parallel U.S.-Soviet approaches.'<sup>8</sup> 29. A second Soviet objective, that has been articulated with increasing authority in the unofficial private discussions and publicly, is to promote political, rather than military, solutions to regional conflicts that can peacefully accommodate the complex and volatile indigenous political, economic and/or cultural forces that are largely beyond the control of either superpower. The Soviet solution to the cultural diversity and conflict in the developing world is now to call for 'governments of national reconciliation.' Soviet officials readily acknowledge that the record of such coalitions, particularly when the conflicts have escalated to internationalized civil wars, is not good. But they appropriately note that if the combatants are deprived of the option to play off the two superpowers, as frequently occurred during the E2/ Sivard, o p. 10.

- I/ This theme began to emerge in unofficial meetings between U.S. and Soviet foreign policy analysts in early 1987. The most extensive and sustained discussions of how regional conflicts affect, and can be affected by U.S.-Soviet relations have occurred under the auspices of the Dartmouth Conference, a high level exchange of private views on the overall U.S.-Soviet relationship that was proposed by President Dwight Eisenhower and has been meeting annually since 1960. In September a small sub-group on southern Africa, chaired by Gleb Starachenko and John Stremlau, reached agreement on a very general scenario for a joint and/or parallel actions to by the U.S. and the Soviet Union aimed at promoting an end of apartheid in southern Africa. Since then the Dartmouth Conference Task Force on Regional Conflicts has made significant progress in developing a crossregional framework for clarifying relative U.S. and Soviet interests and the prospects for confidence building in the Middle East, Southwest Asia, Central America and Southern Africa, at February 1988 discussions in Moscow, another session the following December in New York, and a third round in May 1989 in Moscow. The Task Force is chaired by former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Harold Saunders and the Head of the Soviet Academy of Sciences Institute of World Economics and Politics, Y. Primakov. Complete non-attributed records of the meetings of the Dartmouth Conference Regional Conflicts Task Force, that began in 1981 following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, can be obtained from Robert Lehman, The Kettering Foundation, 200 Commons Road, Dayton, Ohio 45459-2799.