Arms treaty progress

Press, 25 September 1989, Page 10

Arms treaty progress

NZPA-Reuter Jackson Hole, Wyoming United States and Soviet Foreign Ministers, wrapping up two days of talks on Saturday, agreed a superpower summit could be held next spring or early summer and said major new concessions by Moscow made a strategic arms treaty more likely. The Secretary of State, Mr James Baker, and the Soviet Foreign Minister, Mr Eduard Shevardnadze, signed six agreements on arms control and other matters, broke a 15-year deadlock on monitoring methods for nuclear testing and, reported progress in many other areas. Their meetings also produced a timeframe of next April to June for a first summit between President George

Bush of the United States and the Soviet leader, President Mikhail Gorbachev, which President Bush said would probably take place in Washington. In the talks’ most dramatic development, Mr Shevardnadze announced two major concessions he said should make a strategic arms reduction treaty (S.T.A.R.T.) “quite a realistic prospect.” One concession concerned a disputed Soviet radar installation and the other Moscow’s linkage of a S.T.A.R.T. accord with limiting US “Star Wars” space defence programmes. “I believe that the pace we see now is very good,” Mr Shevardnadze told reporters. “We have had very serious talks on all problems. I am able to report to you that we were able to obtain substantial progress.”