Following these came settlement of the Soviet World War II lend-lease debt, a 3-year trade pact, and cultural exchange programmes.
Efforts to reach a new SALT agreement after 1975 were hampered by such issues as Soviet and East European repression of dissidents, the Soviet involvement in Angola and other African states, and continued Soviet support of the Arab cause against Israel. Despite these sources of tension, Soviet and US negotiators reached an agreement on a new SALT treaty in May 1979, and Brezhnev met with US President Jimmy Carter in Vienna for a formal signing one month later. The Soviet armed intervention in Afghanistan in December of that year, however, doomed ratification of the accord by the US Congress.
US-Soviet relations worsened during the early 1980s. The United States condemned the Soviet role in the suppression of dissidence in Poland and the September 1983 shooting down of a Korean Air Lines civilian aircraft in Soviet airspace.