Arms pact the salve of Reagan term?

Press, 4 August 1987, Page 6

Arms pact the salve of Reagan term?

By

CAROL GIACOMO

of Reuter (through NZPA) Washington

It may be one of modern history’s more peculiar ironies that an ageing, staunchly anti-Communist American President could be rescued politically by a younger Soviet counterpart with a historic arms accord.

A flurry of promising super-Power negotiating activity during the last two weeks has brought hope of a United StatesSoviet deal to rid the world of medium-range nuclear missiles, which would be the first time the super-Powers had agreed to cut atomic arsenals rather than merely contain their growth.

Obstacles remain — particularly over the fate of 72 West German Pershing 1A missiles with United States warheads — but top American officials appear confident that President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, can sign at a summit meeting this year a treaty banishing intermediate-range

nuclear forces. The acid test will come when the United States Secretary of State, Mr George Shultz, and the Soviet Foreign Minister, Mr Eduard Shevardnadze, meet in Washington from September 15 to 17 to clear up whatever matters arml\control negotiators

at Geneva cannot resolve. “There is still much to do in Geneva but I’m heartened that the climate is now receptive to a historic proposal of this type,” Mr Reagan said lact wapU Some in Washington are even holding out thaprospect of an agreement on

deep cuts in long-range strategic weapons, which has been Mr Reagan’s arms control priority. The United States last week warmly welcomed the presentation of a Soviet draft treaty on reducing strategic forces, which can strike each other’s countries, and said

it opened the possibility of an agreement this year. But Mr Reagan’s attachment to his “star wars” space shield against nuclear missiles remains an enormous hurdle to such an accord. The Soviets seem as determined to kill the strategic defence initiative as Mr Reagan is to keep it alive. Mr Reagan’s attachment to S.D.I. as the only way of ridding the world of nuclear weapons and Mr Gorbachev’s hostility to it as an extension of the arms race into space blocked final agreement to big arms cuts proposed at the Reykjavik summit in October.

Months of post-Iceland gloom were first lifted by Mr Gorbachev on February 28, as Mr Reagan was struggling in the deepest whirlpool of Iran-contra revelations, when he offered to negotiate on intermediate missiles separately from the more daunting issues of strategic weapons and space defences.

Most experts say the proposed pact is • more sir/ficant politically than

militarily because it deals with only a fraction of the super-Power arsenals. Fewer than 1000 missiles would be . lost, compared with some 24,000 strategic weapons. But it would mandate reductions for the first time since the atomic age dawned in 1945 and ensure Messrs Reagan and Gorbachev their places in history.

It seems likely that intermediate missile agreement will be the only arms accord — and perhaps the only significant foreign policy success — of Mr Reagan’s Presidency, which ends in January 1989. For Mr Reagan, a pact and promised summit — created by Mr Gorbachev’s decision to drop a demand that Moscow retain 100 intermediate warheads in Asia — may provide an escape from the depredations of the Iran-contra affair.

Mr Reagan, the most popular United States President in a generation, and at 76 the oldest, has watched his ratings plummet over the scandal. I