Belgian Reassures Reagan on Plan to Deploy Missiles

Belgian Premier Wilfried Martens reaffirmed to President Reagan on Monday his nation’s commitment to deploy U.S.-made cruise missiles, but he apparently stopped short of pledging that the nuclear weapons will be in place on schedule in March.

However, a senior U.S. official--using words such as “confident” and “optimistic”--said that, based on Martens’ conversation with Reagan, the Administration fully expects the deployment to proceed as planned despite heated political opposition in Belgium.

The Administration regards Belgium’s deployment of 48 cruise missiles--part of a continuing North Atlantic Treaty Organization buildup of nuclear weapons--as crucial to the coming U.S.-Soviet arms negotiations.

If the deployment is carried out on schedule, it will demonstrate NATO’s unity and resolve, officials here believe, while a delay would indicate division and disarray. Reagan stressed this point to Martens during their talks, according to the senior official, who spoke to reporters on the condition that he not be identified.

Meanwhile, the White House and the State Department sought to minimize differences between the U.S. and Soviet positions on the extent to which the three sets of arms talks, agreed to last week by both sides in Geneva, are linked.

Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko said Sunday, for example, that no agreement on reducing ground-based offensive weapons is possible unless the United States agrees to accept limits on space weapons. He also warned that continued NATO deployment of U.S.-built cruise and Pershing 2 missiles to counter Soviet installation of SS-20 missiles targeted on Western Europe would jeopardize the negotiations over these weapons.

White House spokesman Larry Speakes characterized Gromyko’s remarks as routine Soviet rhetoric that is likely to increase as the bargaining nears. “It is not overly disturbing to us,” he added.

Robert C. McFarlane, the President’s national security adviser, described as “almost laughable” Gromyko’s statement that the negotiations would be threatened if the United States proceeds as planned with the testing of an anti-satellite weapon this spring.

Concerning a U.S. weapons program that seems to have the Soviets particularly agitated--the so-called “Star Wars” research on a space-based missile defense system--State Department spokesman Bernard Kalb reiterated Reagan’s position that the United States would negotiate with the Kremlin before deploying any such system.

Kalb said, “If a sound defense eventually proves feasible, there will be no deployment until we discuss fully the role of defense with the U.S.S.R.”

Several spokesmen, attempting to clarify the Administration’s position on “linkage,” said it is the U.S. view that the three prospective sets of arms talks--on intercontinental offensive weapons, intermediate-range offensive weapons and space-oriented defensive weapons--are interrelated. But they emphasized that the United States, unlike the Soviets, believes that agreement in one set of talks should not hinge on agreement in another set.

Reagan, Secretary of State George P. Shultz and other Administration officials discussed in detail these negotiating complexities with Martens and his Belgian delegation.

One Administration official, who requested anonymity, said Martens is embarking on a round of consultations with NATO leaders--obviously inviting them, in effect, to pressure him to proceed with the missile deployment.

“He wants to be able to go back to his country and say, ‘Look, we’re part of the NATO alliance--they’re all telling us we’ve got to do this,’ ” the official said.

NATO agreed in December, 1979, on a “dual track,” carrot-and-stick strategy: Negotiate intermediate-range arms with the Soviets, but until this bargaining succeeds, deploy 572 cruise and Pershing 2 missiles. A subsequent deployment schedule called for the Belgians to place 48 cruise missiles in operation this March.

It was the start of NATO’s deployment in late 1983 that caused the Soviets to walk out of nuclear arms talks with the United States.

In his formal departure statement, Martens said that during his meeting with Reagan he “reaffirmed our commitment to the objectives of the (NATO) alliance.”

He added, “The security of Western Europe depends essentially on the solidarity and the joint efforts of the American and European allies.” Concerning intermediate-range nuclear weapons, he said, “I confirmed our attachment to the dual-track decision, which is an expression of firmness in defense and of openness for dialogue.”

But Martens did not say precisely whether the deployment of missiles in his nation will take place on schedule. And there has been domestic political pressure on him to delay the deployment until after the Belgian elections later this year.

Reagan, in his statement, said he and Martens “recognize that the progress that we’re now enjoying in arms control discussions is linked to the alliance’s commitment to modernize our defenses and the steps we’ve taken to maintain a balance of nuclear forces in Europe. And that’s why we give special emphasis to an issue of central concern to the NATO alliance: the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear forces in Western Europe to counter Soviet SS-20 deployments.”