Table II shows the costs incurred by NBS in carrying out the program. They include international travel of NBS people from Washington to Moscow, plus lodging, subsistence, and local travel of Soviet visitors in the United States. (Costs do not include salaries of NBS scientists while in the Soviet Union.) Table II. Costs (thousands of dollars) by Fiscal year NBS believes that the USSR Academy of Sciences considers the exchange with NBS to be scientifically important. To oversee the program, the Academy appointed a committee of distinguished scientists, including several academicians and institute directors, with Academician Yu. A. Osip'yan, Director of the Institute of Solid State Physics, as chairman. Arrangements were being made for the chairman and secretary to visit NBS early in 1980, but the official invitation from the NBS Director reached the American Embassy in Moscow the weekend that the USSR invaded Afghanistan. The invitation was not delivered and the highlevel visit has not taken place. In November 1985, following the Geneva Summit Meeting, taking a different approach, Academy Vice President Yevgeny Velikhov issued a personal invitation to NBS Director Ambler to be the guest of the Academy for 7-10 days in Moscow to discuss progress under the Memorandum and possible opportunities for expansion. This invitation has not been accepted because the Director believes that expansion is not possible because of budgetary and manpower constraints, and he does not want to give the impression that he is willing to discuss expansion. All NBS professional staff members are held to be personally responsible for being aware of significant developments taking place in their own fields of specialty anywhere in the world, including the Soviet Union. It is also the firm policy of the NBS Director that no international activities may be undertaken just because they are international; there must be technical benefit, either gain of information or sharing of work, to justify any international project. These principles have guided the conduct of the exchange program with the USSR. NBS laboratory hosts of USSR scientists prepare a report assessing accomplishments during the visits and the benefits to their own programs. Similarly, all NBS travellers to the USSR prepare reports describing the laboratories visited and the work they saw. Examination of these reports leads one to the conclusions that on the whole NBS has gained much information that would not have been available otherwise; that the USSR scientists sent to the United States are technically competent and interested in cooperation; that the USSR laboratories that have been visited carry on research at the forefront of their fields; and that the exchange of information is roughly equivalent in the two directions. These conclusions can be illustrated by a few quotations from some of the reports. For example, one NBS host writes: "The visitors developed a satisfactory theory sufficient to compare with NBS experiments. Thus the visit was totally successful. The Soviet visitors were efficient, talented and got straight to the project defined." Another host report states: "Exchange objectives were fulfilled with a high degree of success. More scientific progress was accomplished than originally anticipated." However, there These comments are characteristic of the majority. were exceptions. One host report states: "The technical benefits would have been significantly increased by a longer period of stay (permitting joint research), and by a better match between the visitor's area of expertise and our own area of research." Another host wrote: "While their technical work is undoubtedly equivalent to American standards, their command of English was not up to what we had been led to believe. It is hard to see how either side benefitted from this exchange because of language barriers." The trip reports generally contain a great deal of detailed information about the technical work discussed in the Soviet Union and comparisons of their work with that in the United States. The most recent NBS visitor to the USSR, a mathematician, writes: "The primary objective of the trip was achieved in that I obtained a broad view of current academic research on inverse problems in the USSR. The applications that were contemplated generally lay in electromagnetic theory, elasticity, seismology, plasma physics, image restoration, and integral geometry." He then goes on to report on the discussions at the various laboratories he visited. Another visitor reported: "The Soviets, particularly the group of V. E. Fortev at the Institute of Chemical Physics, have been working much longer than anyone else on the experimental development of classical strongly coupled plasmas. It was particularly valuable to discuss their activities in this important and relatively new area of research, the reasons they had chosen their current directions, and which techniques developed in the U.S. they had found useful.' This same visitor also writes: "The reciprocity could not have been better, once I came in contact with the scientists. If I had any problem along this line with the scientists, it was getting them to keep quiet long enough to listen to our results, in an effort to get feedback." The NBS visitors almost all report that they were received hospitably and that there was little or no reluctance to discuss any topic they brought up. This is not to say that no difficulties have been experienced. The usual administrative complications have occurred--one important laboratory, to which a visit had been accepted by cable, was declared closed after the NBS visitor was already in Moscow; other laboratories have been removed from approved lists; notifications of accepted visits have been late; issuance of visas has been so late that visitors have sometimes picked them up on the way to the airport. In these respects, NBS is treated no better, and no worse, than other U.S. agencies. V. Future cooperation Because of the conclusion that the exchange program has been technically valuable, NBS wishes to continue the program. Although an increase in the number and duration of NBS visits to the USSR would result in the acquisition of more useful information, the number of NBS staff members who wish to visit is limited. Further, the constraints of time and travel funds available mean that NBS attention is focused on countries where the technical pay-off is greater, such as Japan and the countries of Western Europe. Continuation of cooperation with the ASUSSR at approximately the present level of activity is planned. On behalf of Secretary Pierce, I am replying to your letter to him, dated 27 June 1986, concerning U.S.-U.S.S.R. Agreement on Cooperation in Housing and Other Construction. As the Executive Secretary for this Agreement, I have compiled the attached report along the lines outlined in your letter. Further research must still be done on annual program costs and the information will be sent to your office later this week. The report concentrates on the activities under the Agreement since it was renewed for a third five-year period on June 28, 1984. In the two years since then, this technical exchange program has been completely revitalized under the direction of Secretary Pierce. In response both to a speech on Soviet-American exchanges by the President on June 27, 1984, and to a letter from Secretary of State Shultz to Secretary Pierce of the same date, Secretary Pierce led a 20-member delegation to Moscow in September 1985, the first Cabinet-level meeting under this Agreement in seven years. This Fourth Joint Committee Meeting in Moscow reviewed and approved a bilateral implementation plan of 18 projects in six Working Groups, or subject, areas. From the beginning of his involvement, Secretary Pierce has insisted on developing a commercial dimension to this technical exchange program. As a result, six members of the U.S. delegation that he led to Moscow last year were senior corporate executives. Their presence on this delegation signified his intention to try to open commercial opportunities for U.S. construction-related industries in the Soviet Union. HUD's efforts in this regard are coordinated with the Department of Commerce and are directed towards organizing U.S. participation in an International Construction Exhibition in Moscow in May 1987. |