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
Foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" The last sentence became "the four most famous words of Ronald Reagan's Presidency." Reagan later said that the "forceful tone" of his speech was influenced by hearing before his speech that those on the East side of the wall attempting to hear him had been kept away by police. The Soviet news agency wrote that Reagan's visit was "openly provocative, war-mongering." The East-West tensions that had reached intense new heights earlier in the decade rapidly subsided through the mid-to-late 1980s. In 1988, the Soviets officially declared