Moscow assails space plan

Press, 1 June 1985, Page 11

Moscow assails space plan

NZPA-Reuter Geneva The Soviet Union and the United States resumed arms control talks yesterday. Moscow restated its aim, to halt President Ronald Reagan’s "star wars” plan. The Soviet chief negotiator, Viktor Karpov, said before beginning the second round that Moscow’s main concern would be to stop the American strategic defence initiative, which is researching a space-based missile defence system. He said that stopping an arms race in space was a common goal set by the Soviet Foreign Minister, Mr Andrei Gromyko, and the American Secretary of State, Mr George Shultz, at Geneva in January. “So we feel that both our countries should now practically agree how to do sb,” he said. The opening round of

talks began on March 12 after Messrs Shultz and Gromyko agreed to end a 15-month breakdown in super-Power arms negotiations, but they appeared to be deadlocked over the “star wars” issue when they recessed six weeks later. The second round, which is expected to last about eight weeks, began at the Soviet mission. The Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, in a surprise move on Thursday, offered to make deep cuts .in nuclear arsenals but only in return for the Americans’ scrapping the space defence. He renewed a previous Soviet offer to cut mediumrange European missiles to the same level as similar French and British weapons. He offered deep cuts in strategic weapons, but all this depended on the S.D.I. plan’s cancellation.