High-tech arms on agenda

Press, 17 May 1984, Page 10

High-tech arms on agenda

NZPA-Reuter Brussels N.A.T.O. Defence Ministers are meeting today to discuss how to improve conventional defence and boost transatlantic arms co-opera-tion on high-technology weapons. The United States Defence Secretary, Mr Caspar Weinberger, in an optimistic statement on his arrival at Brussels yesterday, said that the Ministers would give the green light to newtechnology weapons proposals aimed at improving the alliance’s conventional forces.

European N.A.T.O. Defence Ministers, who met yesterday, moved towards that goal by agreeing on closer consultations among the armed forces of European nations.

They said that Ministers had laid special emphasis on greater co-operation in arms procurement in Europe and between Europe and the United States. The imbalance in arms trade across the Atlantic is estimated by military experts to be seven-to-one in favour of the United States.

While Washington buys Belgian machine-guns and Franco-German anti-air-craft missiles, such purchases are dwarfed by its

sales of Fl 6 fighter-bombers and armoured personnel carriers to Europe, they said.

Ministers are also likely to discuss the latest Soviet announcement of the planned deployment of new' longer-range missiles in East Germany as a response to the American cruise and Pershing 2 nuclear missiles that N.A.T.O. has started to deploy in Western Europe.

An American Assistant Secretary of State, Richard Burt, accused Moscow yesterday of trying to intimidate Western public opinion by the move and create enough anxiety to persuade N.A.T.O. to make important concessions to bring the Soviet Union back to arms talks.

N.A.T.O. ministers will also debate improving the alliance’s support system of airbases, port facilities, arms dumps, and fuel pipelines, but discussions are expected to be overshadowed by the money problem.

Allied commanders are seeking up to $23 billion in infrastructure funds over the next six years, but diplomats said that that was far more than European allies could afford.