Reagan formula seen as upstaging Soviets

Press, 28 September 1983, Page 9

Reagan formula seen as upstaging Soviets

NZPA-Reuter New York

President Ronald Reagan had upstaged the Soviet Union on arms control by presenting new American proposals to limit mediumrange nuclear missiles, Western diplomats said yesterday.

Mr Reagan earlier outlined the proposals in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, telling Moscow: “The door to an agreement is open. It is time for the Soviet Union to walk through it.” Diplomats said that by going to the United Nations to make his arms control appeal, Mr Reagan had preempted the Soviet Union, which has presented numerous disarmament proposals at the world organisation. The United States would accept “any equitable, verifiable agreement that stabilises forces at lower levels than currently exist.” He said that the United States had restructured its proposal for world-wide limits on intermediate-range warheads in an effort to meet several Soviet concerns. The United States still insisted that both sides accept the same world-wide ceiling on their intermedi-ate-range arsenals, but under his new proposal he pledged that the full United States allotment would not be deployed in Europe. The United States had acceded to Moscow’s request to limit bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Any reduction in new American missile forces set to be deployed in Europe later this year would include Pershing 2 as well as cruise missiles.

The United States, under a N.A.T.O. agreement, plans to install 108 Pershing and 464 cruise missiles in Europe unless there is an agreement at the United States-Soviet talks. Moscow’s SS2O intermediate weapons are divided between Europe and Asia, about two-thirds in Europe and one-third in Asia.

Moscow has argued that Washington should not be able to match those combined forces with American weapons based only , in Europe, as Mr Reagan’s

original negotiating position proposed. The Administration had given ground after several N.A.T.O. allies had sympathised with the Soviet argument, a senior American official said. The United States would retain the right to match the total Soviet force by building medium-range missiles outside Europe, but officials said there Were no plans to do so.

Mr Reagan assured Moscow that he would not put enough American missiles in Europe to match the Soviet world total. He did not say what the new ceilings should be, but a senior American official said that Washington’s arms negotiator at Geneva, Paul Nitze, had suggested the limit might go as low as 50 warheads or as high as 450 on each side.

Moscow has nearly 1200 warheads on its SS2Os.

Willingness to include land-based aircraft in the talks also, “is an important step towards the Soviet position,” the official said.

Moscow believes that an agreement that does not limit aircraft would give the United States a permanent nuclear edge because of the large American bomber force in Europe. Despite the new proposals, American officials said, the planned deployment of the 572 Pershing and cruise missiles would proceed later this year unless there was an agreement in Geneva.

Mr Reagan said that he still preferred his original “zero option” proposal for the complete elimination of intermediate missiles on both sides. But the United States was flexible, and he challenged the Soviet Union “to match our flexibility.” “The door to an agreement is open. It is time for the Soviet Union to walk through it. “If the Soviets sit down at the bargaining table seeking genuine arms reductions, there will be arms reduction ...”

In Moscow, Tass, the Soviet news agency, dismissed Mr Reagan’s speech as "hypocritical distortions of the truth” but it said nothing about arms control.

At the United Nations a Soviet diplomatic source said, "there was nothing new” in Mr Reagan’s speech. “I have not seen anything constructive in the speech,” he said. Richard Ovinnikov, the second in charge of the Soviet United Nations delegation, said that Mr Reagan’s proposals were “sugar-coated deployment.” But the United* Nations Secretary-General, Mr Perez de Cuellar “believes that the proposals made by the President are worthy of the most serious consideration,” his spokesman said. ® In Ottawa the British Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, said that the Western alliance should wage a battle of ideas against Soviet propaganda and “bogus arguments” on arms control. “It is time for freedom to take the offensive,” she said in a speech to a joint Parliamentary session of the Canadian Senate and House of Commons.

"In the last year or two we have seen a massive attempt to bend the will of Western governments by working on the minds of our electorates with bogus arguments.

“Every few weeks there is a further statement from Moscow designed to give an appearance of flexibility. But so far when these public statements are checked at the negotiating table — the real test of truth — flexibility disappears.” Western democracies must fight a “battle of ideas” against Soviet propaganda, she said. “We must meet it by puncturing each spurious argument and by destroying every myth that emerges. We must constantly proclaim our ideals, to our own people at home, to young countries who have yet to choose, to those who live in the shadow of tyranny. It is time for freedom to take the offensive.”

Mrs Thatcher spoke after meeting the Canadian Prime Minister, Mr Pierre Trudeau, for talks on topics including NATO's planned deployment of cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe.