U.S. Will Urge Belgians to Accept Missiles

President Reagan will tell Belgian Premier Wilfried Martens next week that any decision by the Brussels government to renege on its promise to deploy 48 cruise missiles would undercut renewed U.S.-Soviet arms control talks, a senior Administration official said Friday.

Martens, scheduled to confer with Reagan and other officials Monday, is the first head of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization government to visit Washington since a U.S.-Soviet agreement to resume arms control negotiations was worked out in Geneva earlier this week.

The agreement, by Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko, was the result of the first U.S.-Soviet arms discussions since the Soviets walked out of arms talks 13 months ago to protest deployment of Pershing 2 and cruise missiles in Europe.

“We believe the Shultz-Gromyko decision to resume negotiations is largely a result of alliance firmness in not giving in to various Soviet demands after the walkout a year ago,” said the senior official, who briefed reporters on issues to be discussed with Martens.

“The fact that the alliance has stood together and that we have maintained the deployment schedule for the missiles, we think, has had a salutary effect on bringing the Soviets back.”

‘Counterproductive Effect’

The official concluded: “So we think that to defer the beginning of the (Belgian) deployment because of the fact that there’s now been an agreement at Geneva would have a counterproductive effect. We will make that point to the prime minister.”

NATO decided in 1979 to deploy 108 Pershing 2 ballistic missiles and 464 cruise missiles in five Western European countries to balance Soviet SS-20 intermediate-range rockets targeted on Western Europe. Deployment has already begun in West Germany, Britain and Italy, but Belgium and the Nertherlands--each scheduled to receive 48 missiles--have postponed their final decisions.

Paul H. Nitze, senior arms control adviser to Shultz and chief U.S. delegate in the last round of intermediate-range nuclear force talks, visited The Hague on Friday to brief Dutch leaders on the Geneva talks and to urge the Netherlands to go ahead with the scheduled deployment.

“The same spirit of alliance consultation and unity will be critical for achieving our mutual objectives of radical reductions in nuclear weapons and strengthened strategic stability,” Nitze said, according to a dispatch from The Hague.

There are strong political pressures against deployment in both Belgium and the Netherlands, even though the foreign ministers of both countries signed the final communique of a NATO meeting last month that reaffirmed the decision to deploy the missiles unless the Soviets agreed to negotiated restraints on the intermediate-range forces of both sides.

Martens is expected to explain to the President the political problems that deployment poses for his four-party coalition government, which must call new elections before the end of the year.

The senior U.S. official, who briefed reporters on the understanding that he would not be identified, predicted that Belgium would keep its promise to deploy. Moreover, the Belgian government will not fall over the issue, the official said, although he admitted: “It’s a dicey affair.

“We think that in terms of shared responsibility, shared risk, shared willingness to bear the burdens, that it is very important that a number of countries participate,” the official said.