Reagan missile offer ‘made in good faith’

Press, 20 November 1981, Page 7

Reagan missile offer ‘made in good faith’

NZPA-Reuter Washington The United States will consider any serious counterproposals from Moscow to President Reagan’s call for drastic cuts in Soviet- missiles aimed at Western Europe, American officials have said. The official Soviet news agency. Tass, swiftly dismissed the Reagan initiative yesterday as propaganda and said the United States was merely trying to get a nuclear advantage. But a sg24enior State Department official denied that Mr Reagan’s proposal that Moscow dismantle 600 missiles with 1100 warheads in return for N.A.T.O.’s dropping plans for 572 single warhead missiles was a propaganda ploy. Mr Reagan said in a speech beamed live to Europe that he had sent a “simple, straightforward yet historic message” to the Soviet President (Mr Leonid Brezhnev) proposing mutual cuts in conventional, inter-mediate-range nuclear and strategic forces. “This would be an historic step. With Soviet agreement, we could together substantially reduce the dread threat, of nuclear war which hangs over the people of Europe,” Mr Reagan declared in his first important foreign-policy speech. “This, like the first footstep on the moon, would be a giant step for mankind.”

The speech came four days before Mr Brezhnev visits West Germany, a hotbed of recent protests against nuclear arms. The White House said European reaction to the speech was highly favourable and estimated that 150 to 200 million people saw Mr Reagan speaking in live or taped broadcasts. A White House spokesman, Larry Speakes, said the United States spent ?U550,000 to help foreign broadcasts transmit the speech to Europe. The senior official called the Reagan proposal eminently fair, even though it called on Moscow to scrap existing missiles while N.A.T.O. would cancel somewhat shaky plans to deploy missiles which would not be operational for at least two years. Mr Reagan proposed that the Soviet Union get rid of 1100 warheads on its mobile SS2O and older SS4 and SSS missiles while N.A.T.O. would shelve plans to deploy 572 longer range Pershing 2 and land-based Cruise missiles. The official said it was a “good assumption” that a Soviet offer to dismantle only its 250 or so triplewarhead SS2Os would not be acceptable to the United States. He also said it would be meaningless for the Soviets to destroy only SS2Os de-

ployed west of the Ural Mountains. Others are located towards China and could be swiftly moved to within striking range of Western Europe. The senior official said Mr Reagan’s call for “openness and creativity” in verifying compliance with an armscontrol pact should not be equated exclusively with onsite inspection, which the Soviet Union has vigorously opposed in the past. The negotiations with the Soviet Union on theatre nuclear forces begin on November 30 in Geneva with the two sides already in sharp disagreement over their scope. Moscow has insisted that they deal with American bombers in Western Europe which could drop nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union and nuclear weapons on carriers off the Continent. The senior official said these “forward-based systems” would not be discussed in the early stages of the talks but restraints might be applied to them later, perhaps in the context of strategic arms limitation talks. Although Mr Reagan’s proposal, known as the “zero option,” seemed a particularly hard bargain, the official said they were offered in good faith and blamed the- Soviet Union for creating tension by deploying one new missile every five days around Western Europe.

He said it was up to Moscow to take steps to improve relations. “If the Soviets are genuinely interested in achieving an improved climate between the East and West, and reducing tensions, then they must be prepared to deal positively with the measures which they took that have contributed to the increasing levels of tensions,” he said. “Nothing could be more simple.” Just hours after Mr Reagan’s speech, the House of Representatives voted by wide margins to support Bl bomber and MX missile programmes, two major planks in his plan for modernising American strategic nuclear forces. Jim Wright, leader of the Democratic majority in the House, called on his party members to back the missile programme. He said President Reagan had made “a dramatic and historic gesture of peace” in offering to remove all intermediate range missiles in Europe. “Let us not cut out the ground on which he stands at this very pioment,” he added. A Republican, Jack Edwards, said the Bl bomber was “one of the chips the President should have when negotiating” arms cuts.