N.A.T.O. leaders agree on arms reductions

Press, 1 June 1989, Page 10

N.A.T.O. leaders agree on arms reductions

NZPA-Reuter Brussels N.A.T.O. leaders wrapped up their 40th anniversary summit with a strategy for wide-ranging arms cuts in the future and a call to close the East-West divide.

The Western Alliance, under pressure until now by a flurry of disarmament proposals from the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, settled a row over tactical nuclear missiles and challenged the Soviet bloc to catch a new mood of detente. The United States President, George Bush, set the tone with a major armscontrol initiative, endorsed by the 16-nation alliance, seeking cuts of 20 per cent in United States combat troops in Europe and even bigger reductions by the Soviet Union.

Mr Bush, hungry for an international success, also stamped his own authority on the meeting in contrast

to President Reagan’s lack of appetite for debate on disarmament policy at last year’s summit.

“We want to overcome the painful divisions of Europe, which we have never accepted,” summit leaders said in a declaration on Tuesday at the end of the two-day meeting.

“We want to move beyond the post-war period... We seek to shape a new order of peace in Europe.” Calling for the tearing down of "walls that separate us physically and politically,” N.A.T.O. leaders said they wanted to “establish a new pattern of relations between the

countries of East and West in which ideological and military antagonism will be replaced with cooperation, trust and peaceful competition.” Mr Bush told a news conference that the alliance had scored a "double hit” on conventional and short-range nuclear forces. “It demonstrates the alliance’s ability to manage change to our advantage,” he said. In Paris, the Soviet Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, welcomed Mr Bush’s arms-cuts proposals, including a 15 per cent reduction in aircraft and military helicopters, as a “serious step in the right direction.”

1 He was cautious how1 ever, about Mr Bush’s i one-year deadline for >- reaching agreement at I conventional forces reduction talks (C.F.E.) in s Vienna. The Allies also forged a a deal to begin negotiations with Moscow on reducing a short-range nuclear weapons (S.N.F.) in Europe after the C.F.E. a talks had reached agree- ” ment, although no missiles would be dismantled until t conventional cuts were 1 implemented. 1 “This is an excellent - birthday present,” said r the West German Chant cellor, Helmut Kohl, ;, who, with his Foreign a Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, has fought a

tough campaign against the United States and Britain to begin S.N.F. talks. N.A.T.O.’s SecretaryGeneral, Manfred Woerner, said the outcome of the summit proved the vigour of the alliance 40 years after it was founded to counter what the West saw as post-war Soviet expansionism. “You can see that this is an alliance on the move and it clearly has a future as important as its past,” he said. “I am optimistic that we have never had a better chance or opportunity to imprint our mark on the future,” he told a news conference.