Reykjavík Summit productive discussion for the first time. An agreement by Gorbachev to on-site inspections, a continuing American demand which had not been achieved in the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 or the ABM and SALT I pacts of 1972, constituted a significant step forward. Despite its apparent failure, participants and observers have referred to the summit as an enormous breakthrough which eventually facilitated the INF Treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty), signed at the Washington Summit on 8 December 1987. Reykjavík Summit The Reykjavík Summit was a summit meeting between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary of the Communist Party
Speeches and debates of Ronald Reagan the Berlin Wall. On June 12, 1987, he gave a speech at the Wall in which he challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "Tear down this wall!" Reagan's senior staffers objected to the phrase, but Reagan overruled them saying, "I think we'll leave it in." "Tear down this wall!" has been called "The four most famous words of Ronald Reagan's Presidency." Although there is some disagreement over how much influence Reagan's words had on the destruction of the wall, the speech is remembered as an important moment in Cold War history and was listed by "Time" magazine as one of