Moscow team arrives for Geneva parley

Press, 12 March 1985, Page 10

Moscow team arrives for Geneva parley

NZPA-NYT Geneva The chief Soviet arms negotiator, arriving at Geneva with his delegation yesterday, said that the goal in the arms talks with the United States that begin today was “preventing an arms race in space and terminating it on Earth.” In pointed contrast to the arrival statement of American negotiators 28 hours earlier, Moscow’s chief negotiator, Viktor Karpov, emphasised that the negotiations would deal with “a complex of questions concerning nuclear and space arms in their inter-relationship.” The United States statement did not mention space weapons. The Soviet diplomat’s language was borrowed almost verbatim from the joint statement of January 8, in which the Secretary of State, Mr George Shultz and the Foreign Minister, Mr Andrei Gromyko, announced the format for the new talks. The Russians have treated that statement as a sort of rhetorical victory in their effort to highlight the issue of space weapons, which have become central to American military plans. As if to underscore the point, Mr Karpov made the first public use of the

official name for the new round of negotiations. They are to be called the “Negotiations on Nuclear and Space Arms.” An American official said later that the United States had agreed to this title, although no acronym had been concocted to follow the tradition of previous arms control discussions — the strategic arms limitation talks (S.A.L.T.) and the strategic arms reduction talks (S.T.A.R.T.). “Unfortunately, N.A.S.A.’s already taken,” said the official, referring to the National Aeronautics and

Space Administration. The negotiations will be divided into three working groups, one on strategic, or long-range nuclear arms, one on medium-range nuclear arms, and one on defence and space arms. The Russians have declared that agreements to reduce the arsenals of nuclear bombs and missiles will depend on American willingness to limit the strategic defence initiative. That is Mr Ronald Reagan’s name for the research programme, popularly called “star wars,” which is aimed at developing non-nuclear weapons to intercept nuclear missiles. The American team, headed by its chief negotiator, Max Kampelman, is reportedly under instructions not to make any agreement that would impede “star wars.” Instead, the United States negotiators have been instructed to spend the first round of talks, expected to last about a month, on sounding out specific Soviet proposals on space weapons, objecting to alleged Soviet violations of the 1972 AntiBallistic Missile treaty, and encouraging the Russians to co-operate in an eventual transition from offensive weapons to non-nuclear defences.