Soviets pour scorn on Reagan call

Press, 20 November 1981, Page 7

Soviets pour scorn on Reagan call

NZPA-Reuter Moscow The official Soviet news agancy. Tass, has dismissed President Reagan’s proposal for a mutual ban on nuclear missiles in Europe as a propaganda ploy, indicating that Moscow would refuse to accept it as a basis for negotiations. In an unusually rapid response to Mr Reagan’s initiative, announced in a foreign-policy address yesterday, the agency said it was aimed only at ensuring United States-Soviet arms talks, opening in Geneva on November 30, ended in stalemate. It poured scorn on the President’s assessment of the present balance of power in Europe and said that if his proposal was out into effect, it would leave the Soviet Union defenceless. The Soviet leadership was given advance details of Mr Reagan’s speech by the American Ambassador in Moscow (Mr Arthur Hartman). The Tass commentary, read out in the main news programme on State television, appeared to be the Kremlin’s initial reply. “The United States proposal is a mere propaganda ploy, designed to stalemate the Geneva talks and present the American course of escalating the arms race and

ensuring military superiority as a ‘peace initiative’,” it said. Tass said the President’s offer to drop plans to deploy 572 Pershing-2 and Cruise missiles in Western Europe if Moscow scrapped all its SS2O and ageing SS4 and SSS missiles was an attempt to gain an over-all nuclear advantage “by the back door.” “The reasoning behind the speech can be summed up as the elimination of the U.S.S.R.’s existing defence potential in Europe, while the U.S. forward-based systems and submarine-based missile complexes and the nuclear bombers of Britain and France will be preserved,” it said. Tass said Mr Reagan had quoted “absolutely fantastic figures” by saying that the present nuclear balance in Europe was six-to-one in the Soviet Union’s favour. Citing figures given by President Leonid Brezhnev in a magazine interview recently, it said there was in fact virtual parity of nuclear delivery systems between East and West and that in terms of warheads the West had a 50 per cent advantage. Tass said the Western medium-range arsenal included 700 American aircraft and 263 missiles and bombers belonging to Britain and France.

.Tass underlined Moscow’s attitude to the initiative by quoting in advance from Soviet magazine and book articles on the forthcoming talks in Geneva. They said the triple-war-head SS2O missiles had been installed only to counter existing weapons of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and that a United States demand for their withdrawal would have to be met by cuts in Western forwardbased systems. Tass said Washington had taken extraordinary steps to give “propaganda backing” to Mr Reagan’s speech. The aim had been to ensure maximum pressure on public opinion, especially among the peace movement in Western Europe, it said. The comment appeared to reflect Soviet frustration over the timing of Mr Reagan’s announcement only a few days before Mr Brezhnev visits West Germany. With the West German peace movement already putting the Bonn Government under pressure to drop its commitment to the new American missiles, Western diplomats had predicted Mr Brezhnev would announce a new Soviet concession such as a unilateral freeze on deployment of SS2Os to encourage them.