Defence chiefs entreat Dutch to take missiles

Press, 18 May 1984, Page 6

Defence chiefs entreat Dutch to take missiles

NZPA-Reuter Brussels N.A.T.O. Defence Ministers put pressure on the Netherlands yesterday to agree to the deployment of 48 American cruise nuclear missiles and a row between Turkey and Greece threatened to hold up approval of the alliance’s military goals.

Officials said that the Ministers, beginning a twoday meeting, had warned the Dutch Defence Minister, Mr Jacob de Ruiter, of grave consequences for N.A.T.O. solidarity and East-West arms control if his Government did not accept its full quota of missiles.

The Dutch Cabinet will decide the issue next month but faces an uncertain Parliamentary majority and strong domestic opposition and deployment. Recent reports have suggested it

may have to delay any decision. The West German Defence Minister, Dr Manfred Woerner, said that he had told Mr de Ruiter, “The Soviet Union would regard any departure from the N.A.T.O. dual-track decision as an encouragement to pursue its policy of dividing the (Western) alliance.”

(The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s dualtrack decision, taken in December 1979, was to base 572 cruise and Pershing 2 missiles in five West European countries while seeking an arms control accord with Moscow to limit missile deployments.) West Germany, Britain, and Italy have started siting cruise and Pershing 2 missiles under N.A.T.O. plans to counter Soviet SS-20 rockets and Belgium has begun deployment preparations. The Ministers did over-

come one dispute which had threatened to block their whole force planning process — a Greek objection to Turkey’s being encouraged to deploy Harpoon anti-ship missiles in the Aegean Sea. Ministers said that fiveyear force goals for N.A.T.O. nations had been approved and that the Greek-Turkish row had been smoothed over. But some officials regard the whole process as unrealistic since many countries cannot afford to meet the goals they have accepted. The Ministers were seeking agreement on new hightechnology conventional weapons today after failing despite long wrangling to agree on funding for a military infrastructure programme.

The Ministers were due to approve a list of advanced arms projects for co-opera-including

munitions that sought their own targets, long-ranged surveillance radars, and communications systems designed to defeat electronic jamming. The projects are part of a drive to improve the alliance’s conventional defences and make it less dependent on controversial nuclear weapons.

That strategy suffered a setback yesterday when Ministers were unable to bridge a wide gap on spending to improve airbases, port facilities, munitions storage, and fuel pipelines vital to sustain N.A.T.O.’s reinforcements in wartime. Officials said that the United States wanted JUSIO billion ($15.4 billion) over the next six years while West Germany which funds a quarter of'N.A.T.O.’s infrastructure, would not go beyond SUS 6 billion ($9.2 billing).