Summit plans treaty to halve nuclear arsenals

Press, 5 December 1989, Page 1

Summit plans treaty to halve nuclear arsenals

NZPA-Reuter Valletta Presidents Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush, basking in the warmest super-Power climate since World War 11, have set their sights on a treaty by next June to halve their arsenals of inter-continental nuclear weapons. The Soviet and American leaders wrapped up their first summit on Sunday pledging to work for a Strategic Arms Reduction (S.T.A.R.T.) treaty by the time they meet again in the United States in the last two weeks of June.

They played down differences over issues such as naval arms control and Central America and said their discussions had been thorough in spite of a storm in the Mediterranean which forced them to cancel one round of talks as well as dinner.

“We are leaving one epoch of cold war and are entering an-

other epoch,” Mr Gorbachev told a news conference aboard the Soviet liner Maxim Gorky, where he and Mr Bush met on Saturday and Sunday in a sheltered bay off the island of Malta. Mr Bush welcomed liberal political reforms in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and said: “He (Gorbachev) knows that not only the President but all the people of the United States would like to see this peaceful democratic evolution continue.”

The changes in Eastern Europe, where old-style communism is disappearing fast in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and East Germany, were at the centre of the summit, but neither Mr Bush nor Mr Gorbachev chose to give details of their talks on this subject. Asked if Germany should be reunified, Mr Gorbachev said it would be unwise to ignore the

reality that two German States already existed. Mr Bush limited himself to saying that the United States did not want to dictate events in. other countries.

Both leaders acknowledged differences over Central America, where the United States accuses Nicaragua and Cuba of supplying Soviet weapons to Leftist rebels in El Salvador and trying to export revolution across the region. Mr Bush said he accepted Soviet assurances that Moscow was no longer directly arming Leftist insurgents. He laid the blame on Cuba and Nicaragua’s Sandinist leaders who, he said, were duping Moscow with denials that they were sending arms. Mr Gorbachev said the time had come for talks on reducing naval forces but Mr Bush, aware that N.A.T.O. depends on the sea link between the United States and Western Europe, said: “We

had no agreement at all on that particular question.” There were more encouraging signs on the treaty to slash the United States and Soviet arsenals of inter-continental nuclear weapons by roughly half. Before leaving Malta for Brussels to brief the NATO. allies, Mr Bush said he hoped for a S.T.A.R.T. treaty by June. But the United States Secretary of State, Mr James Baker, interviewed after the summit on United States television, said the , treaty would ■ probably not be completed until the end of 1990. “It’s going to take some political will from the top to break some logjams,” he said. “Our side is very happy with the outcome," a Soviet official • said. “The weather may have been terrible outside but it was fajr-weather sailing on the Gorky.”

Further reports, page 11.