Reykjavík Summit Reykjavík Summit The Reykjavík Summit was a summit meeting between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, held in Höfði in Reykjavík, on 11–12 October 1986. The talks collapsed at the last minute, but the progress that had been achieved eventually resulted in the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1986, Gorbachev had proposed banning all ballistic missiles, but Reagan wanted to continue research on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which involved the militarization of outer space. Yet Soviet suspicion of SDI
17th G7 summit "core members" of the international forum: British Prime Minister John Major sent a letter to other members of the G7, asking for their permission to invite Mikhail Gorbachev, who has been pressing to come to London to plead for more Western economic support for his country. Pressure to invite Mr. Gorbachev had come mainly from the leaders of France, Germany, and Italy who have made public appeals for him to be invited to attend; but Britain sent the official invitation inviting the Soviet Union to participate. A wry comment which was oft repeated during the summit was that G7 had