Reagan’s accusations could destroy S.A.L.T. Treaty

Press, 27 April 1983, Page 15

Reagan’s accusations could destroy S.A.L.T. Treaty

From

PETER PRINGLE

in Washington

By making public United States charges of Soviet violations of the SALT II nuclear weapons treaty, the Reagan Administration is turning its back on a decade of secret and extraordinarily successful United-Soviet resolution of such complaints from both sides. The Administration move is being seen as a final signal that President Reagan may be about to torpedo SALT 11, which is still unratified by the Senate and has been constantly bad-mouthed by Administration officials. Before Reagan took office, charges and counter-charges of SALT violations were resolved secretly by a little-known body called the Standing Consultative Commission. It is made up of one Soviet and one American commissioner and has met twice a year in Geneva since 1972.

A host of charges, from both Washington and Moscow, of cheating or bending the rules of SALT I, have been resolved in private. According to former members of the commission, the confidential nature of the discussions has been essential to their success.

Although both sides say they are adhering to the unratified SALT 11, signed in 1979, the Administration has been reluctant to use the S.C.C. for its current complaints and this month leaked sqme specific

charges of non-compliance. Without giving any details, the President himself suggested he will “have more to say” about the charges in the near future.

A special task force has been compiling evidence to support the charges of SALT II violations plus other alleged Soviet breaches of the agreements on nuclear weapons testing and chemical and biological warfare.

“The Administration appears more interested in trashing SALT than preserving it, otherwise it would not have raised these issues in the newspapers,” said William Jackson, who was executive director of the General Advisory Committee on Arms Control of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency when SALT II was negotiated. “If the Administration had been serious about the treaty they would have tried to resolve these points through the S.C.C.”

The precise details of the successes of the S.C.C., known to its small staff as the “silent service,” are still secret. Indeed, one of the commission’s key regulations stipulates that it cannot make any of its procedures public without the “ex-

press consent” of both commissioners.

In 1979, after the signing of SALT 11, the then United States commissioner, Robert Buchheim, and his predecessor, Sidney Graybeal, gave the only known report on the activities of the S.C.C. to a closed session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Graybeal, a Republican appointed by Nixon, praised the work of the commission and said the Russians took it very seriously. “If you really believe that arms control can contribute to United States security and you have an agreement, the viability of that agreement depends upon the early raising of any compliance question (through the S.C.C.) and removing it,” Graybeal said. “If you let that set and fester it will become a boil and undermine the agreement.” Buchheim said that the commission’s time was devoted about equally between complaints from each side. “If it looks like their (the Soviets) activities are becoming excessively prominent subjects of discussions, they will see to it that there is something against which we will have to defend ourselves.”

he said. This direct, candid, give-and-take had “worked rather well.”

Buchheim, a Republican appointed by President Ford; noted: “We (Americans) are enormously preoccupied with our ability to catch them (the Soviets) cheating. I think they are, with at least as much emotion, preoccupied with our not forever going around the world calling them liars and cheats . . . I think we can look to the Soviets for pretty good behaviour if we ourselves temper our public expressions.” The Reagan Administration, including some who consider arms control agreements with the Russians simply not worth having, are apparently on a completely different tack. Already they have leaked top secret intelligence information about two Soviet missile tests which, taken together, appear to be in violation of SALT 11.

The treaty allows each side to develop one new missile but according to Administration sources the Russians have been testing two. Countering the charge, Moscow has said the second missile is only a modification of the SS-13, which was built before the 1979 SALT II treaty. United States intelligence analysts reply that the modification goes beyond the SALT II definitions of what is allowed. — Copyright, London Observer Service;