Soviet general makes subs offer

Press, 10 March 1983, Page 8

Soviet general makes subs offer

NZPA Stockholm A Soviet military officer says that the Soviet Union would withdraw six nucleararmed submarines from the Baltic Sea if the Nordic region was declared a nuclear-free zone. Colonel-General Nikolai Chervov, a member of the Soviet defence staff, made the statement in a Moscow

interview with Swedish television. General Chervov spoke of six “Golf’-class, dieselpowered submarines, each carrying three intermediaterange nuclear missiles, stationed permanently in the Baltic. The Soviets were “not hiding” the fact that the “Golf’-class submarines were there with their missiles and said that their presence was

well-known to the United States and its N.A.T.O. allies.

“When looking into the question of including the Baltic Sea in the nuclear-free zone, this would mean that these submarines were to be withdrawn,” he said. General Chervov, an arms control expert, mentioned no other Soviet submarines in the Baltic that could carry nuclear weapons. Sweden has

said an old “Whisky”-class Soviet submarine that ran aground off the Royal Swedish Navy’s Karlskrona base in October, 1981, carried nuclear-tipped torpedoes.

General Chervov is the first Soviet official to mention a specific Soviet weapon in connection with the declaration of the Nordic area as a nuclear-free-zone, proposed by the former Finnish

President, Urho Kekkonen, in 1963. It also was the first time that Moscow had indicated publicly the Baltic would be included in such a zone.

In June 1981, the late Soviet President, Leonid Brezhnev, hinted that the Kremlin would be willing to discuss withdrawal of some missiles bordering the nordic region.