Top Soviets Not Flexible on Disarmament, Hart Says

Sen. Gary Hart said Sunday that he found no flexibility in the Soviet position on nuclear disarmament during conversations he had with high Kremlin officials last week.

Last year’s unsuccessful Democratic presidential aspirant said he suggested that Moscow propose a temporary halt to all nuclear-weapons testing and deployment to pave the way for an overall arms control agreement with the United States.

He said that, as an alternative, he suggested that the Soviet Union could indicate a willingness to accept a possible U.S. proposal for such a moratorium while negotiations continue.

“Unfortunately, the idea was not accepted by the Soviet leaders,” Hart told a news conference here.

Hard Line From Tass Meanwhile, the official news agency Tass asserted that the newly designated American team for rewnewed arms control talks with the Soviet Union “includes political figures adhering to a tough line . . . and treating the Soviet-American talks skeptically.”

Tass said that delegation chairman Max M. Kampelman had recently expressed doubts about the possibility of progress at such discussions and that former Sen. John Tower, who will lead the U.S. side in strategic weapons talks, is known as a “hawk” who will defend the interests of the Pentagon in the negotiations.

A different, conciliatory note was sounded Sunday by Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, in a dispatch circulated by the Associated Press.

Letter From Shultz Referring to an exchange between Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko and Secretary of State George P. Shultz in the days after their preliminary arms talks in Geneva early this month, Pravda said the United States, in public and private statements, had shown a “positive” approach toward new arms control talks.

Gromyko, speaking in a two-hour television interview with Soviet journalists Jan. 13, said Shultz had written him after the Geneva talks to assure him of U.S. intentions to abide by their agreement.

“If we take the very fact of the Geneva meeting and the joint statement adopted there, the sub sequent assurances through diplomatic channels, the high evaluation of the Geneva accords by the White House and the U.S. State Department, it looks like a positive aspect has appeared overseas in the approach to the talks,” Pravda commented Sunday.

Hart met with Gromyko and other Kremlin officials during a private trip to Moscow and Leningrad.

The Colorado senator said he told the Soviet officials that politicians and diplomats should try to regain the initiative from nuclear scientists, who are developing ever more dangerous weapons.

He said he had suggested, for example, that one of the superpowers declare that it would not put weapons into space for six months or more and ask the other superpower to agree to respect the moratorium while negotiations proceeded. This, Hart said, would “break the scientific and technical momentum.”

However, he said Gromyko told him that the Soviet Union had made similar proposals in the past and that the United States refused to agree to them.

Hart recalled that U.S. arms control negotiators are concerned about verification of any testing ban and that he chided the Soviet leadership for not making a move in this area.

“I would like to see some initiative on this (Soviet) side, more willingness on this side to be more cooperative on verification measures,” he said.

He said he also raised the question of restricted emigration from the Soviet Union, mentioning several specific cases in his talks with Kremlin officials. Any change in Moscow’s attitude on human rights issues, he said, would make a “tremendous difference” toward improving Soviet-American relations.