Administration Split on Top Arms Negotiator

Despite the generally upbeat mood of President Reagan and the U.S. officials who returned Wednesday from Geneva, divisions within the Administration are already emerging over the question of who will lead this country’s negotiating team in the new arms control talks with Moscow.

The divisions, like so many within the Reagan Administration on arms control matters in the past, center on the political credentials and ideology of some of those being proposed to head the negotiations.

And even as Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s plane flew home, some officials traveling with him were beginning to voice skepticism about the sincerity of the Soviet Union in pursuing new agreements.

The secretary said he has had preliminary talks with President Reagan by telephone about who might be named to head the U.S. team. Shultz reportedly favors Max Kampelman, a conservative Democrat who represented the United States at the 35-nation Helsinki Conference on European Security and Cooperation in 1975.

Some White House officials, however, have indicated opposition to Kampelman because he would be suspect in the eyes of conservative Republicans, who consider him insufficently hard-line on arms control. Other critics argue that Kampelman is relatively inexperienced on current nuclear weapons issues.

Some presidential aides have suggested a preference for former Republican Sen. John Tower of Texas, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee before his retirement last year and a strong supporter of the Administration’s defense buildup.

The difficulties in picking an arms negotiating team parallel the problems in choosing a new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Presidential aides object to Shultz’s preference for Vernon A. Walters, now a roving U.S. ambassador and trouble-shooter, to succeed Jeane J. Kirkpatrick.

The White House wants to strip the U.N. job of Cabinet status but Walters, a retired Army general, has said he would not want the job in that case. At the same time, presidential aides view Kampelman as a better choice for the U.N. position than Walters.

In addition to Kampelman and Walters, others being promoted for the U.N. post are former Sen. Charles H. Percy (R-Ill.) and conservative New York businessman Maxwell M. Rabb, now U.S. ambassador to Italy.

Tired but relaxed as he flew home Wednesday, Shultz said the Soviet-American agreement to resume arms control talks after a 13-month hiatus was “a good agreement but nobody’s hat should go into the air.”

“We have a start,” Shultz said, but he and other returning U.S. officials emphasized that the two sides remain far apart on the substantive issues of arms control and that long, difficult negotiations almost certainly lie ahead.

Still, emphasizing the positive, Shultz denied that either he or Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko ever gave any indication that they would walk out of the talks, contrary to some news reports from Geneva on Tuesday. “That wasn’t the atmosphere of the talks at all,” he said.

Conflicts With Reports And officials returning with Shultz said Gromyko asked “far less” than the U.S. team expected. Specifically, the Soviets never mentioned a moratorium on testing of anti-satellite weapons, nor did they demand an end to U.S. “militarization of space.” This conflicts with some news reports from Geneva a day earlier.

Some of the glow was taken off Shultz’s achievement in Geneva even before his plane landed, as skepticism about Soviet intentions surfaced among members of his delegation. Some officials on the aircraft reiterated earlier fears that Moscow’s basic aim may be to use the new arms talks to kill the space-based missile defense program--nicknamed “Star Wars”--rather than to cut offensive missile strengths.

More specifically, these officials told reporters that the Soviets might negotiate reductions on long-range and intermediate-range offensive missiles, but then withhold final agreement until the Administration accepts restrictions on its space-based defense research program.

They were particularly worried that the Soviets might make the space defense program hostage to a U.S. agreement to cut back its intermediate-range missiles in Europe, thus playing on European fears that the United States could move away from its commitment to defend them. Officials called such a potential Soviet gambit a double whammy on the European allies: It would ask for the removal of the current European protection--the U.S. missiles there--in return for allowing Washington a space-defense system that might not protect Europe.

While a nucleus of officials returned to Washington with Shultz, many senior members of the delegation fanned out from Geneva to distant capitals to spread word of the Geneva talks to allies. Returning with Shultz were Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard N. Perle, widely identified as the Administration official most dubious about arms agreements with Moscow, and disarmament agency chief Kenneth L. Adelman, whose views are generally regarded as moderate, somewhere between those espoused by the Pentagon and the State Department.