The stakes in the N-talks

Press, 10 February 1983, Page 16

The stakes in the N-talks

Neither the Soviet Union nor the United States appears to have changed its position since last year on attempts to control the place of intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe. The talks that have just started again in Geneva are secondary to the debates that are going on in the rest of Western Europe. The American VicePresident, Mr George Bush, is on a sevencountry tour of Western Europe where he is trying to win back the hearts and minds of West Europeans for the “zero option,” which has been proposed by President Reagan. The Soviet Union, for its part, is sticking to the offer it made in December to reduce the number of its missiles targeted on Europe to 162, the same number that the British and French have. Both sides reject the other side’s offer; there the negotiating positions remain stuck.

Some flexibility is going to be needed if a sense of security, let alone a balance of forces, is to be achieved. Last July, the Soviet and American negotiators arrived at a compromise that proved to be unacceptable to their Governments and eventually led to the resignation of Mr Eugene Rostow, the director of the American Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. This curious affair was an indication of the difficulties- that the negotiators are facing. The Americans are trying to persuade the Soviet Union to remove all Soviet intermediate-range weapons — about 240 of them aimed at Europe — in return for an American undertaking not to deploy 572 Pershing-2 and cruise missiles in Europe, aimed at the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union maintains that this is not only giving something away for what, at the moment, amounts to nothing, but it would leave the British and French nuclear deterrents intact without a countervailing Soviet force. The Soviet Union is making the point that, from Moscow, one Western missile looks very much like another.

The argument is not as straightforward as the Soviet Union tries to make it sound. The French insist that their nuclear weapons are an independent deterrent. While it may be argued that the British nuclear weapons are integrated with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s strategy, this is not true of the French weapons. West Germans, for instance, do not necessarily feel safer because France has an independent nuclear force. The weapons that the Soviet Union has deployed — the SS2O missiles — are also far more accurate than the British and French weapons. The French reject any inclusion of their nuclear weapons in the calculations being made at Geneva. If British and French nuclear weapons are going to be part of the calculations, France and Britain will need to be part of

the Geneva negotiations. The Soviet Union and the United States do not appear to want this. The most sensible solution to the dilemma is a British while the British and French missiles cannot be counted one-for-one against the Soviet missiles, some value should be given to them. This might mean that, in an eventual compromise over numbers of Soviet and American missiles in Europe, the Americans would have slightly fewer. The negotiations have become more complicated because of the debates and protests about the stationing of nuclear weapons. The Americans have reason to feel aggrieved. They questioned European politicians carefully on the subject before they decided to deploy the new intermediate-range weapons there. The European politicians reassured the Americans, but miscalculated the depth of feeling. In West Germany and Britain elections- will be held this year — on March 6 in West Germany and at a date still to be decided in Britain. The Social Democrats in West Germany, now in opposition, seem prepared to refuse the deployment of the missiles in West Germany if they win the election. Besides that, a new party in West Germany, the Greens, is campaigning on a platform that includes the rejection of the missiles. In Britain, the campaign against the deployment is growing to such an extent that the Government has considered mounting a campaign to sway politicial opinion to back the deployment. Only in Italy, where some of the missiles are expected to be based, is there little debate. Mr Bush is in Europe to persuade the Europeans. He is not there to negotiate with the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union Mr Andropov is handling the issue with more political sharpness than Mr Brezhnev. He is also bidding for the hearts and minds of the Europeans. Propaganda should not obscure the fact that both sides genuinely want some agreement. At the moment they want it on their own terms; but, unless one or both become the victims of their own propaganda, progress is possible. The stakes are high. Without an agreement, more nuclear weapons may be built and the world will be one more step down the road to possible nuclear destruction. If the Americans fail to keep the countries of N.A.T.O. united, a period of real estrangement between the United States and Europe will set in. The result will not necessarily mean that Europe will become dominated by the Soviet Union, but it is more likely that the European countries will become disunited. Unpredictable consequences will follow. It is not indulging in fantasy to say that the future of the world is the most important issue at stake in Geneva.