Moscow is looking for an arms agreement

Press, 26 December 1984, Page 15

Moscow is looking for an arms agreement

From

MARK FRANKLAND,

in Moscow

Soviet foreign policy is changing gear. So far it is a cautious shift, and will remain so until the Soviet leadership is convinced that the arms talks, to be prepared by Foreign Minister Gromyko’s January meeting with Secretary of State Shultz, can produce results acceptable to Moscow. The Soviet Union has strong reasons to reach agreements with the United States, but its doubts about the chances of doing so sometimes seem equally strong. The foreign community in Moscow continues to debate whether the Politburo itself is divided about the forthcoming talks. The evidence is, as usual, inconclusive one way or the other. It is probable that, for the moment, President Chernenko and Foreign Minister Gromyko are plying slightly different games by

Chernenko is the nice guy who stresses Soviet keenness for better relations with the United States. Tough guy Gromyko makes it plain that Moscow strikes hard bargains, a job he is well suited for. He once remarked to a foreign dignitary that, whenever the Soviet Union received a proposal from the West, it examined it from every possible angle. To illustrate his point he mimed a man taking up a package and looking at it slowly and suspiciously from every side. But there is a perceptible difference of judgment among senior Soviet commentators. Some have said they believe that “Reaganism” has reached its •jeak and that a more positive attitude to East-West

relations can now be expected from Washington. There have been some thorough analyses of the President’s re-election, sometimes not differing much from what has appeared in the Western press. The desire of a second-term President to go down in the history books as a peace-bringing statesman has been alluded to.

An important figure in the party’s foreign policy hierarchy sounded a different note in a recent newspaper article. This described at length America’s so-called “ideological” assault on the Soviet bloc. “Imperialism’s strategic line” towards the Soviet Union, he argued, is becoming “ever n&te rigid and refined.” ’

These approaches reflect more than different judgments about the state of the Reagan Administration. They also reflect different appreciations of the present condition of the Soviet Union and the directions in which it might develop. Some Russians who support reform at home believe that an improvement in relations with the West is a precondition for it. Soviet commentary on the forthcoming talks ignores the diplomatic somersault that Moscow has performed. For almost a yeajgithe Soviet Government insisted there

could be no more discussion of medium-range nuclear weapons in Europe until N.A.T.O. undertook to remove the new Pershing 2 and cruise missiles. But Gromyko and Shultz will discuss this topic when they meet and the Western missile programme continues. The Russians get round this by saying that the coming talks are entirely new. They are not, they insist, going back to the old Geneva talks which were indeed killed off for good by the Pershing and cruise missiles. It is not a very good argument.

A better one (though scarcely for public consumption) is that those months of Soviet intransigence and indignation contributed to anxiety in Europe and America about EastWest relations, and that this anxiety did affect Western Governments. Boris Ponomaryov, who runs the Central Committee’s own “foreign ministry,” said last week that it was “the alarm of the Americans themselves about the security of their country as a result of its course towards confrontation with the U.S.S.R.” that obliged Reagan to change his tone during the election campaign. This reflects the Soviet belief r that it always pays to keep up propaganda pressure on Western

Governments, and that this is more effectively done indirectly, via public opinion, than directly on the Governments themselves. In fact the Soviet handling of medium-range missiles has been full of somersaults — indirect evidence that the row which developed after Moscow had deployed its first SS2Os took the Russians by surprise.

In fact the Soviet handling of medium-range missiles has been full of somersaults — indirect evidence that the row which developed after Moscow had deployed its first SS2Os took the Russians by surprise. There are signs that the Russians may try the same tactic over space weapons. President Chernenko said this week that his Government gives “paramount significance” to preventing the militarisation of Unless this is achieved, he wentfein, all previous arms agreements might be nullified.

But it is clear that the Reagan Administration does not want to tie its hands where the space weapons are concerned. The two sides therefore seem set for a collision over the problem the Russians have singled out as the most important. Is this really the case? The Soviet position guarantees to arouse maximum discussion and agitation in the West among those groups that are as opposed to space weapons as the Russians. The talks on space are bound to be long, and while they are in progress it is very much in Moscow’s interest to encourage as much alarm in the West as it can.

It is possible that the Soviet Union does not yet have any alternative positions on space weapons worked out. The problem is new and complicated and the first need is to test Reagan’s overall intentions. Copyright — London Observer