Moscow arms pact limited in scope

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33577, 4 July 1974, Page 15

Moscow arms pact limited in scope

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

MOSCOW, July 3.

President Nixon and the Soviet leader, Mr Leonid Brezhnev, today signed agreements to limit anti-missile defences and underground nuclear tests, and decided to aim for a 10-year strategic arms pact starting next year.

On the final day of their week-long summit talks., the leaders of the world’s two Super-Powers decided to limit their anti-ballistic missile systems to one each.

They also banned underground nuclear tests over 150 kilotons after March 31, 1976.

As expected the two leaders failed to sign a new pact to replace the 1972 interim agreement on strategic arms limitation but decided to take a new approach aimed at reaching an early agreement. Observers in Moscow said that Mr Nixon, conscious of his Watergate problems looming up behind, had noi pushed too hard for agreements which could be attacked as being “soft.”

In a joint commupique, the two leaders agreed that the final stage of the European Security Conference should take place soon and be concluded with another summit meeting.

They gave no sign of any progress towards reducing troops and armaments in central Europe through talks on mutually balanced force reductions. Middle East But they agreed that the Geneva conference on a permanent settlement in the Middle East should reconvene as soon as possible. They gave no date. The two men decided to consider a joint initiative in the Geneva Disarmament Conference to sign a convention banning “the most dangerous, lethal means of chemical warfare.” Before the signing ceremony in the Kremlin, Mr, Nixon held his final private talks with Mr Brezhnev and a last plenary session involving leaders of both sides. He met members of the diplomatic corps in the former czarist private apartments and attended a reception in the ornate St George’s Hall. U.S. visit Mr Nixon has invited the Soviet leader to visit the United States next year to “maintain the momentum of Soviet-American detente.” Mr Nixon said that despite differences on a number of questions the task now was to go ahead and complete what had been started and secure further improvements in Soviet-American relations. The Soviet leader, who has seemed to give his own strong personal commitment to detente, said last night that Soviet-American summit meetings helped towards settling the most difficult and complicated problems. On arrival at Loring Air Force Base in Maine tonight, Mr Nixon will make a television address to the American people and fly to his Florida home at Key Biscayne, where he will spend the week-end. Limits on arms Under the agreement to limit anti-ballistic missile systems the two sides are allowed only one each either surrounding their capital or ringing one of their offensive missile sites. They can only move the systems — now located around' a missile site at Grand Forks, North Dakota, and around Moscow — once every five years. The United States Secretary of State (Dr Henry Kissinger) told a briefing that the new agreements meant that over-all questions of nuclear superiority were almost devoid of meaning. Both sides maintained huge arsenals of offensive

missiles, he said. “Any idea that any country can easily achieve strategic superiority is almost devoid, in this situation, of any strategic meaning.” The five-year agreement limiting nuclear tests did not cover tests for peaceful purposes. This would be covered in a separate pact to be negotiated as soon as possible.

But it did include a wide exchange of information about location of test sites and vital geological data needed for monitoring and verification. In their discussions of limits on tests for peaceful purposes—such as dam construction in mountainous terrain—both sides reached an unwritten agreement to allow observers from the other side to attend the explosions. * Dr Kissinger said that this was the first time the Soviet Union had reached an understanding to allow foreign observers to monitor nuclear explosions. Dr Kissinger said that the summit talks on arms limita-

tion were held "with a frankness which would have been inconceivable a few years ago, a frankness that might have been considered to have violated intelligence codes a few years ago.”

Both sides ran up against two difficulties in their highly complex attempts to weigh up the comparative advantages of their present land and submarine missiles and strategic bombers and their weapons under construction, he said. A short extension of their interim agreement, ending in 1977, would have ended just as the two sides were ready to deploy new weapons, and it was extremely difficult to agree on a permanent pact.

But under a 10-year agreement, the two sides could stabilise the rate of their deployment of new weapons over a much longer period, Dr Kissinger said.' Apart from today’s nuclear agreements, a series of four earlier pacts have already been signed. These deal with Soviet-American co-opera-tion in housing, health, trade and technology.