Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions

The MBFR talks were first proposed at the SALT meeting between President Richard M. Nixon and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev.

The two leaders agreed that the political side of the talks would be held by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).

Their proposed alternative was "Mutual Reductions of Forces and Armaments in Central Europe" (MRFACE), a title that was agreed upon but seldom used.

Instead we have hard-working lawyers and diplomats whose first thought is to engage in drafting and whose second is to avoid publicity.The West put its first proposals on the table on 22 November 1973.

[3] In 1976, the different estimates for the number of forces the Warsaw Pact countries were fielding in Eastern Europe became an issue that was never resolved during the talks.