Gorbachev flashed his "iron teeth"

It is 24 years since Reagan and Gorbachev opened the window on the Cold War. They met in November 1985 at a chateau on Lake Geneva.

I was lucky enough to be sent from Washington where I was resident correspondent for ITN. Today in a rather more low key moment, Obama meets Medvedev.

I happen to be blogging from Geneva today. I have a day off and am doing a bit of pro bono for the World Trade Organisation (WTO), chairing a discussion on the state of the Aid for Trade project.

Geneva was a fabulously dull back-drop for so exciting a moment as that first US-Soviet summit, in which undreamt of disarmament and tension reduction were discussed.

We didn’t know it then, but the meeting was also to herald, within half a dozen years, the demise of the Soviet Union itself. And here we are with the essentially dull Mr Medvedev meeting with Barack Obama, on a dullish event in Moscow.

There seems little pre-summit evidence of Obamaski-mania. But all the signs are that another major arms reduction commitment will flow from it.

Back in 1985, it was not the American President we were mesmerised by, but the Soviet.

I remember ABC’s legendary Sam Donaldson asking Mr Gorbachev whether it was true that his teeth were made of iron. Gorby gleamed his teeth for us to show us the whites of his (presumed) ivories.

Good god, the Russian had a sense of humour!

It has not served him well. Gorby now advertises Louis Vuitton luggage, and graces weddings and funerals, reduced at home to a resented figure who stands accused of selling Russia’s greatness down the Volga.

He’ll see Obama tomorrow, not for Russian consumption but for western. Putin too tomorrow, and most reckon that’s where any serious business will be undertaken.

No one will be holding the front page as they did a quarter of a century ago; joy it was to be alive!

I must run to my WTO meeting, of which more, anon.