West unsure of what to make of pact offer

Press, 13 June 1986, Page 6

West unsure of what to make of pact offer

NZPA-Reuter Budapest

An ambitious new Warsaw Pact plan for troop cuts in Europe seems aimed at ending the long running Vienna talks on the issue by vastly expanding the scope of negotiations, Western analysts say. The seven-nation Communist military alliance ended a summit meeting in Budapest yesterday by proposing to slash by more than one million men the number of Warsaw Pact and N.A.T.O. troops confronting each other in Europe by the early 19905.

In an appeal to all N.A.T.O. and European nations, the pact proposed as a first step reductions of 100,000 to 150,000 men a side by the two alliances within the next year or two.

These figures dwarf those being talked about at the East-West talks in Vienna where, a firstphase cut-back, if agreed, would concern fewer than 20,000 American and Soviet soldiers.

The pact proposed three possible alternative forums for discussing its proposals: • a second phase of the 35-nation Stockholm conference on European disarmament, the first phase of which will end in September. • creating a new “special forum” open to European States, the United- States, and Canada.

• opening the Vienna talks to neutral and nonaligned European States. Analysts said all these suggestions appeared to undermine the present concept of the Vienna talks, which deal with troop reductions in only seygn nations .bordering

the East-West divide in central Europe. The pact said it was still interested in reducing troops and arms in central Europe.

Soviet officials in Budapest this week have said they wanted to see a “positive conclusion” to the Vienna talks, which have dragged on for 13 years without agreement. But they have not indicated how the talks could either reach a quick agreement or continue in parallel with the more far- reaching negotiations the Warsaw Pact is now proposing. At Vienna, the two sides are close on the size of initial troop cuts, but they are far apart on how the cuts could be monitored to avoid cheating; the East says N.A.T.O.’s proposed strict control measures amount to legitimised spying. Yesterday’s pact proposals appear to contain some advance on verification; an International committee would be charged with on-site inspection of troops being withdrawn and those left behind.

In Washington the American State Department said that the pact’s proposals on reducing conventional forces in Europe seemed to deal with issues already being negotiated and it called for a response to Western ideas already presented. A State Department spokesman, Bernard Kalb, said that the proposals seemed to be an elaboration of remarks made by the Soviet leader, Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, in East Berlin on April 18. In Brussels the North Atlantic Treaty Organisetion said it would consider thejjjgct’s proposals,