Talks ‘blasted away’ by missiles—Minister

Press, 20 January 1984, Page 6

Talks ‘blasted away’ by missiles—Minister

NZPA-Reuter Stockholm The Soviet Foreign Minister, Mr Andrei Gromyko appeared yesterday to have slammed the door on medium-range nuclear missile negotiations after the first high-level super-Power talks in four months of icy East-West relations. After a five-hour meeting in Stockholm with the American Secretary of State, Mr George Shultz, Mr Gromyko told the West German Foreign Minister, Mr Hans-Dietrich Genscher, that the Geneva talks had been “blasted away” by N.A.T.O.’s deployment of new missiles in Western Europe.

But Mr Genscher said that Mr Gromyko had left the door open to a resumption of other talks on strategic and conventional arms, which Moscow quit shortly after walking out of the medium-range missile talks in November. American officials said that the Shultz-Gromyko meeting on the sidelines of a European disarmament conference had been “extensive and candid,” but refused to give details.

Asked if there had been any progress on arms control, a senior American official said: “If we are going to be successful, we must maintain a certain degree of confidentiality.”

The official Soviet news agency, Tass, did not even wait for the end of the meeting to give its version of events. Almost three hours before Mr Shultz left Mr Gromyko at the Soviet Embassy, Tass reported that the Soviet Minister had “resolutely denounced” American policy. The Soviet news media has highlighted Kremlin anger over the deployment

of cruise and Pershing 2 missiles in Europe by reporting prominently that new medium-range Soviet missile bases were functioning in East Germany and Czechoslovakia.

Mr Genscher quoted Mr Gromyko as saying that Moscow was still considering whether to return to talks with the United States on strategic nuclear arsenals.

Mr Gromyko also held out a prospect of an early resumption of the Vienna East-West talks on reducing conventional forces in Central Europe. “We agreed that these talks were not suspended and that they should be resumed, and I guess they will be in a few months time,” Mr Genscher told reporters after his 2¥2 hour meeting with the Soviet Minister.

Mr Gromyko said in a speech to the Stockholm conference yesterday that Moscow would return to the medium-range nuclear missile talks if N.A.T.O. was

willing to go back on deployment. Despite the missile deadlock the United States and the Soviet Union have shown common opposition to chemical warfare.

Mr Gromyko repeated a Soviet proposal to rid Europe of chemical weapons, and Mr Shultz said that N.A.T.O. would soon submit a treaty for a worldwide ban.

The apparent flexibility on arms control that Mr Gromyko showed in his talks with Messrs Shultz and Genscher contrasted sharply with the anti-American tirade that he delivered in the conference hall. He said that American foreign policy was the main threat to peace and he accused the Reagan Administration of “thinking in terms of war and acting accordingly.” Mr Gromyko made a sustained attack on American military policies, accusing Washington of a huge buildup of nuclear arms aimed at achieving military

superiority and of seeking to disguise its intentions by calling for arms control negotiations. He blamed Washington for the breakdown in United States-Soviet talks on limiting nuclear missiles in Europe. He said that Moscow would never return to the Geneva negotiations unless N.A.T.O. abandoned its deployment of new American missiles. “We stand for serious negotiations and not for negotiations used as a screen for covering up militaristic plans,” Mr Gromyko said. “Having started installation of its missiles, Washington has rendered negotiations pointless. “Militarism, enmity, and war hysteria” were being exported to Western Europe along with the new missiles, he said.

Mr Gromyko also accused the United States, which has troops in a four-nation peace-keeping force in Lebanon, of “sowing death and destruction there.”

There was a danger that the “flames of conflagration” could spread from Lebanon throughout the Middle East, closer to Europe, he said.

Western officials said that they had been shocked by Mr Gromyko’s language. But they said that those parts of his speech dealing with the subject of the Stockholm conference — reducing the risk of conventional war in Europe — had been less negative. Mr Gromyko said that Moscow would support confidence-building measures to lessen military confrontation and suggested there could be agreement on notification of important manoeuvres and troop movements.