Arms experts at odds over pact

Press, 21 November 1987, Page 11

Arms experts at odds over pact

NZPA-Reuter Tooele, Utah Soviet arms experts touring an Army chemical weapons facility said yesterday that agreement on a global pact banning the weapons was near, but their United States hosts disagreed.

Max Friedersdorf, chief United States negotiator at the chemical weapons treaty talks in Geneva, rejected Soviet claims that a treaty is close at hand as being “overly optimistic.”

"There has been progress this year, but there remains an awful lot of detail before a treaty can be concluded,” he told reporters as a six-man Soviet delegation toured the Tooele Army Depot outside Salt Lake City.

Mr Friedersdorf was responding to a comment by Yuri Nazarkin, his

Soviet counterpart and leader of the visiting delegation, that treaty negotiations are now in their final stage.

After the first of two days of visits to the chemical facility ended, Mr Nazarkin called for a deadline of next May for agreement on a treaty. “I should admit there is some difference in assessments,” he said. “I think it is feasible if the other side takes a more optimistic approach.”

Mr Friedersdorf rejected the deadline.

“The Soviets are always wanting to set artificial deadlines. We don’t deal with them on trust, we deal with them on making a treaty so tightly bound and ironclad that they can’t cheat,” he said. United States officials have said that while the Soviet Union has accepted in principle their position on the need for shortnotice, non-refusable verification inspections, Moscow has yet to provide the United States with details of the composition and location of its chemical arsenal.