Reagan Appoints Chief Arms Talks Negotiator : Lawyer Max Kampelman to Head Team of ‘Tough Minded Patriots’

President Reagan on Friday named Washington lawyer Max M. Kampelman, a conservative Democrat, as overall chief of the new U.S. negotiating team at substantive arms control talks with the Soviet Union expected to begin in March.

In addition to his leading role, Kampelman will also oversee specific negotiations on “space arms”--one of the three sets of talks under a broader negotiating umbrella, Secretary of State George P. Shultz announced at the White House.

Former Sen. John Tower (R-Tex.), a conservative and an expert on defense, will head the strategic arms segment, and Maynard W. Glitman, a senior Foreign Service officer, will be in charge of the intermediate-range talks, Shultz said.

‘Up and Probably Out’ In a surprise move, Shultz also announced that retired Gen. Edward L. Rowny, an acknowledged hard-liner who led the previous U.S. strategic arms delegation, will not serve on the negotiating team and instead become a special adviser to Shultz on armaments--”promoted up and probably out,” one specialist observed.

The Soviets’ reaction toward the makeup of the new delegation will probably be more positive than negative, Dmitri K. Simes, a Soviet expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said. But another specialist, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a former senior national security official in the administrations of Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, said he believes that the choices “will keep Moscow guessing about how serious U.S. intentions are for the talks.”

Kampelman, 64, is the most controversial member of the new team, which Shultz described as composed of “tough-minded patriots.” Once an aide to the late Hubert H. Humphrey when Humphrey was in the Senate, Kampelman has had virtually no experience with arms issues. He led the U.S. delegation to a 1982-83 meeting in Madrid, monitoring the progress of the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

However, Kampelman was favored--one official said he was “the only candidate”--by both Shultz and national security adviser Robert C. McFarlane. Asked about Kampelman’s credentials, Shultz told reporters: “He’s smart. He’s a good negotiator. He’s experienced, and he did an outstanding job in Madrid.”

But some experts, speaking privately, said the appointment could be taken as a sign that the Administration does not seriously intend to negotiate on the “Star Wars” space defense program and other space-arms issues.

“It will look like the United States really does intend only to conduct a seminar on space arms, as (Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A.) Gromyko complained,” one expert said. “But at least we should do better than picking a first-year student (a neophyte) to conduct it.”

A North Atlantic Treaty Organization diplomat, expressing disappointment with the choice, said his country’s leaders fear that Kampelman may allow human rights concerns--a high priority in Madrid--to “get in the way of” the arms issues. And he suggested that Kampelman “was snookered” by the Soviets in Madrid into believing that he had reached a deal in which Moscow agreed to improve conditions for some Soviet dissidents.

Nonetheless, the Soviets know and probably respect Kampelman as a serious negotiator from the Madrid meeting, Simes said. “Certainly, there is not the personal animosity toward Kampelman that the Soviets have toward Rowny,” he added.

Tower, 59, was a firm supporter of the Administration’s defense program when he was chairman of the key Senate Armed Services Committee. He also opposed the second strategic arms limitation treaty, which should give him added influence with Republican conservatives when and if a new arms agreement is presented to Congress for ratification.

Although he is broadly experienced in military affairs, Tower is believed to have little in-depth knowledge about the long-range strategic arms delegation he will lead. He decided not to run for reelection to the Senate last year and had been expected to get a major post in the Administration.

“It’s an enormous responsibility, a challenge, an opportunity for service,” Tower said Friday of his new job. Asked whether he thought the Soviets were interested in achieving an arms agreement, he responded: “I don’t think I can make sophisticated assessments at this point. I have a great deal of homework to do.”

Glitman, 51, is a highly respected career State Department official who had been deputy chief of the U.S. delegation to the defunct Geneva talks on intermediate-range offensive weapons, from which Soviet delegates withdrew more than a year ago. He now is head of the U.S. delegation to talks with the Soviet Union on reducing conventional forces in Europe.

The former head of the intermediate-range negotiations is Paul H. Nitze, 78, who was named last month to be Shultz’s first special arms adviser.

Rowny, 67, now another arms adviser, will have “enlarged and broadened” responsibilities, Shultz told reporters. But there was immediate speculation that Rowny, who had expected to remain the lead negotiator on strategic arms, will not stay in his new job long.

Various reasons were advanced privately for Rowny’s departure from the negotiating team. One is that he irritated Shultz at the U.S.-Soviet talks in Geneva last week. Another suggestion is that he refused to serve under Kampelman, whom he considers a neophyte on the arms issues.

All told, “Moscow won’t be wildly enthusiastic about this delegation but it won’t be discouraged either,” said Simes, who was born in the Soviet Union. “Kampleman and Tower are serious men and popular with Congress, the kind of people Moscow likes to negotiate with.”

The composition of the new negotiating team also appeared to downgrade the role of Kenneth N. Adelman, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Nitze and now Rowny have been identified as the top arms advisers to Shultz, interposed between the secretary of state and Adelman.