James A. Abrahamson administration to announce the program would cease. Abrahamson accompanied President Reagan to Reykjavik, Iceland, for the Reykjavik Summit on October 11, 1986, to meet the Soviet leader, Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev. The subject of the Strategic Defense Initiative's technological advances and their effects on the strategic nuclear balance between the United States and the Soviet Union during the last years of the Cold War was raised by the Soviets at the meeting. During the post-summit press conference, Gorbachev said Reagan's insistence on deploying SDI had "frustrated and scuttled" the opportunity for an agreement. Abrahamson was promoted to lieutenant general on
Stuart A. Summit appointees, and for another nine years he had screened candidates for the New York Supreme Court as part of his work for the State Commission on Judicial Nominations. Summit currently is a partner with the New York City law firm Phillips Nizer LLP. On September 23, 1987, toward the end of Ronald Reagan's presidency, Reagan nominated Summit to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to replace Irving Kaufman, who had taken senior status. Summit's name initially had been suggested by his former law partner, Arnold I. Burns, who had been a Deputy Attorney