N.A.T.O. plea

Press, 10 December 1983, Page 10

N.A.T.O. plea

NZPA-Reuter Brussels N.A.T.O. Foreign Ministers planned to appeal to the Soviet Union today to return to talks in nuclear missiles, but some fear that arms control talks between the super-Powers face a long freeze. Moscow’s suspension yesterday of talks in Geneva with the United States on intercontinental strategic arms — the Start talks — came two weeks after it quit parallel talks on medium-range missiles, an action Atlantic alliance Ministers have called unjustified. N.A.T.O. is urging the Kremlin today to return to the medium-range missile talks and pledging adherence to N.A.T.O.’s plan, made in 1979, to site new missiles in Western Europe if no agreement was reaches by this month.

But a senior N.A.T.O. official, in a view shared by many of the Ministers, said that he feared Soviet leaders might seek to crack the alliance, allowing it to “stew in its own juice” by bringing all super-Power missile talks to an abrupt halt. N.A.T.O. Ministers said that they were diappointed, but not surprised by the Soviet decision not to set any date for a resumption of the Geneva strategic arms talks. In Washington President Ronald Reagan said that he did not believe the Soviet Union intended to break off those talks entirely. He said that he hoped the Soviet negotiators would return. But N.A.T.O. officials said that 1984 could well turn into a year of no nuclear arms talks. *»:.