Unscheduled summit talks ‘save S.A.L.T.’

Press, 4 October 1977, Page 8

Unscheduled summit talks ‘save S.A.L.T.’

NZPA New York The United States and the Soviet Union have achieved a “conceptual breakthrough” in their efforts to conclude a new Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, “Time” magazine says in its current issue. The breakthrough was reached at an unscheduled meeting between President Carter and the Soviet Foreign Minister (Mr Andrei Gromyko) last week at the White House, the magazine says. According to “Time,” the Carter-Gromyko meeting “breathed life into the faltering spirit of detente” and improved the chances of concluding a new S.A.L.T. agreement to replace one expiring this month.

Elements of breakthrough, the magazine says, include a reduction of perhaps 10 per cent in the maximum of nuclear arms carriers (missiles and bombers). In 1974 the two nations agreed to limit the number of delivery vehicles to 2400 for both sides, of which 1320 could carry multiple warhead 1 (M.I.R.V.S — multiple independent re-entry ve hides). The Russians modifiet their proposal to count the United States Cruise missile (a low-flying drone launched from bombers) against the 1320 M.I.R.V. carriers. “As a concession to the United States” the magazine says, “there will be an ‘allowance’ for

bombers armed with. “But the total will be less than 200 the Air Force was planning to deploy if there was no new agreement. Under a formula still to be negotiated, the Cruises will be indirectly included *in the context’ of the MJ.R.V. imits.” Restrictions proposed by he Soviet Union on the range of Cruise missiles vill be part of a separate protocol instead of the aain S.A.L.T. agreement. The S.A.L.T. II agreement will have separate limits on giant Soviet missiles such as the SSIB. The Russians agreed in principle to some restrictions on the testing and the deployment of new missiles.