Notes on a meeting in Moscow from March 6-10 between Yasser Arafat & the PLO Delegation and the Soviet government. Arafat was met by Brezhnev, Boris Ponomarev and Andrei Gromyko. Among the issues discussed were the situation in the Middle East, the Soviets desire for Palestine to counter Egypt's "capitulation" to Israel and the U.S. (which Arafat affirmed), tensions in Southern Lebanon and the PLO's increasing desire to further cooperation with Syria and non-Christian Lebanese groups.

Mikonis and Sneh [Israeli Communist Kneset (Parliament) Members] were apparently instructed by the Prime Minister’s office to submit a list of 13 questions to the heads of the international department of the Soviet Communist Party. Suslov and Ponemarev responded in a meeting which took place in Moscow saying that the Soviet Union had always acknowledged Israel’s right to exist and had been making strenuous efforts to dissuade its Arab allies from starting a war against it. The two Soviet officials also implicitly endorsed the view that current Israeli Prime Minister, Levy Eshkol, was taking a more moderate and conciliatory line in his relations with Moscow.

The following CPSU Central Committee document, dated 1 April 1979 and signed by Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Defense Minister Dmitrii Ustinov, KGB chief Yurii Andropov, and CC International Department head Boris Ponomarev, provides a strikingly candid assessment of the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan that the Soviet Politburo confronted in spring 1979. The report attributes the increasing success of the Islamic opposition (i.e., the Afghan Mujaheddin) to the “miscalculations and mistakes” of the PDPA (People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan) regime that seized power following the April 1978 “revolution.”