‘Not all smokescreen, propaganda’

Press, 18 January 1986, Page 10

‘Not all smokescreen, propaganda’

NZPA-Reuter Moscow

The Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, appears to have offered the West some significant concessions in his plan to rid the world of nuclear arms by the year 2000, diplomats say. Specialists in arms control at Western embassies said much or Mr Gorbachev’s blueprint restated known Soviet positions on issues such as space weapons, but several elements were new.

In particular, he appeared to have cast aside the Kremlin’s long-held insistence that its SS2O missiles were deployed to counter British and French weapons. Analysts yesterday scrutinised Mr Gorbachev’s appeal on Thursday that Washington and Western Europe join Moscow in giv-

ing up stone-age ideas and work to a timetable to ban all nuclear arms.

One Western envoy said: “It’s not all just smoke screen and propaganda this time. It seems that underneath there is a genuine determination to achieve a breakthrough in arms control.”

Other diplomats were more sceptical. They said Mr Gorbachev’s wording was at times ambiguous and the test would come in the arms negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union, in Geneva. | The talks, now in their t fourth round, have been deadlocked since they; opened in March last year over the American strategic Defence Initiative dubbed “star wars," and bitterly opposed by the Russians. Diplomats said the Gorbachev blueprint fitted into

a long series of Kremlin declarations aimed at bringing public pressure on the United States and maintaining the momentum of a socalled Soviet peace campaign. Several key points made by Mr Gorbachev that implied a shift in Soviet thinking were identified. The offer of a detailed stage-by-stage plan with deadlines was one innovation.

Mr Gorbachev went further than before in offering on-site verification whenever necessary by outside inspectors if the United States would join the Soviet Union in halting all underground nuclear testing immediately.

Washington, which was refused to join the soviet moratorium, has argued that a declared ban could not adequately verified

without free inspection. The diplomats noted that Mr Gorbachev repeatedly, emphasised on-site verification to monitor compliance with the various stages of his missile reduction plan, addressing United States doubts that Moscow would scrap its weapons. In the most far-reaching shift, Mr Gorbachev called for "the complete elimination of intermediate-range missiles of the U.S.S.R. and the U.SA. in the European zone, both ballistic and cruise missiles,” within eight years. This appeared to imply acceptance of the American “zero option” proposal under which Washington said it would not deploy cruise and Pershing 2 weapons if Moscow scrapped its SS2Os. Since the early 1980 s, the Soviet Union had rejected

any link between the SS2Os and the United States missiles.

In October, France and Britain rejected an offer by Mr Gorbachev to negotiate separately on limits that would balance their weapons with the SS2Os.

His latest statement said simply that Britain and France should pledge not to build up their respective nuclear arms in the eightyear period. In the second phase, the 19905, the West European allies would then be called on to reduce and scrap their nuclear arsenals.

Diplomats noted, however, that Mr Gorbachev was still speaking only of weapons in the “European zone” of the Soviet Union. N.A.T.O. makes no distinction between those and weapons deployed on Soviet territory in the east.