Arms Talks Will Begin March 12 : U.S., Soviets Pick Geneva as Site of 3-Part Negotiations

The United States and the Soviet Union announced agreement Saturday on beginning their new three-part negotiations on strategic weapons, intermediate-range nuclear missiles and space-based anti-missile defenses March 12 in Geneva. President Reagan said that he is “optimistic--not euphoric” that the talks might succeed.

A statement issued simultaneously in Washington and Moscow on Saturday morning disclosed officially that the Soviet leadership had accepted a U.S. proposal that the talks begin in March. The statement made public a Kremlin decision that was sent to the State Department on Thursday, fixing March 12 as the starting date.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko had agreed on the three-part format for the negotiatons during talks in Geneva Jan. 7-8, at which time they also set a 30-day deadline for agreement on a starting date.

‘Certainly Going to Try’

Reagan was asked Saturday in an interview with radio newscasters whether he expects an arms control agreement with the Soviets during his second term. He replied, “We’re certainly going to try. I wouldn’t try to confine it to four years, because I know how long some negotiations have taken. But we’re going to stay there at the table in the hope that this time we can arrive at an actual reduction of weapons.”

In Saturday’s statement, the Soviet Union announced the names of three veteran arms control negotiators as their talk leaders.

Viktor P. Karpov, 55, who headed the Kremlin’s delegation to the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks that the Soviets walked out of late in 1983, will be the overall leader of the Soviet team. He will also be the Kremlin’s chief negotiator on strategic weapons (intercontinental ballistic missiles) in the new, three-track talks.

Leader for Soviet Side

Yuli A. Kvitsinsky, 48, former chief negotiator in the U.S.-Soviet talks on intermediate-range (tactical) nuclear arms, will lead the Soviet side in the new Geneva talks on space weapons and space-based anti-nuclear defenses.

Alexsei A. Obukhov, 47, will negotiate for the Soviet Union in the new effort to reach agreement on intermediate-range weapons. These include arms such as the SS-20 missiles that the Soviet Union now has targeted on Western Europe and the U.S. Pershing 2 and cruise missles that NATO has begun to deploy in Europe to counter the SS-20s. The Soviet Union broke off earlier Geneva talks on mid-range weapons in late 1983.

Obukhov is a somewhat newer figure than Karpov and Kvitsinsky face in the arms talks arena. He was Karpov’s deputy in the START talks and took part in negotiating the Threshhold Test Ban Treaty and the SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) treaty in the 1970s. SALT II was never ratified, but both sides agreed to abide by its terms.

The United States named its negotiating team Jan.18. It will be headed by Max M. Kampelman, a Washington attorney and conservative Democrat who will also be in charge of the U.S. side in talks on space weapons and defenses. Former Texas Republican Sen. John Tower will lead the U.S. talks on strategic weapons, and career diplomat Maynard W. Glitman will head the team discussing intermediate-range weapons.

At a press briefing in Moscow foreign ministry spokesman Vladimir Lomeiko repeated the Soviet insistence that the three parts of the talks be “linked,” not just “interrelated.”

The United States prefers to avoid linkage. If the talks are linked, no agreement on any part of the package could be implemented unless accord is reached on all other parts. Thus any agreement would be hostage, in the Administration’s view, to the Soviet’s declared intention to put an end to Reagan’s space-based defense research program, nicknamed “Star Wars.”

“The questions must be looked at in their entirety and decided together,” Lomeiko said.

White House officials said the interagency group that devised the format agreed to in Geneva Jan. 7-8 has already developed the basic U.S. negotiating position on strategic weapons and intermediate-range missiles. The officials, who spoke on condition they not be named, told reporters that the Senior Arms Control Group has fixed the end of February as the deadline for drafting a unified Administration position on space-based weapons and defense.

The group incudes the key national security agencies--State and Defense departments, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency--and it is headed by Robert C. McFarlane, national security adviser to the President. It includes such figures as Richard R. Burt of the State Department and Richard N. Perle of the Defense Department, both often depicted in the press as adversaries on arms policies. It also includes veteran arms control negotiators Paul H. Nitze and Edward Rowny, who headed the U.S. teams at Geneva talks which the Soviets abandoned in 1983.

Nitze told reporters Friday that he saw slim prospects for success in the new set of talks. And it was in response to that observation that Reagan said Saturday during a meeting with theradio newscasters that, while he sympathized with Nitze’s caution, he tends “to be a little more optimistic--not euphoric.”

Reagan added: “I, too, know how tough this is going to be,” but he observed that “at least it is the first time that I can recall the Soviet Union openly themselves saying they wanted to see the number of weapons reduced.”

In a 30-minute interview, Reagan also said that the United States still plans retribution for terrorist bombings in Beirut. He said he would give no details because that would be “like the policeman warning the killers that he is on his way.”

He said that exchanges of intelligence information with friendly countries has been stepped up in an effort to locate the terrorists responsible for fatal bombing attacks on two U.S. Embassy buildings and a U.S. Marine Corps headquarters in Lebanon.

He added that the United States will not “risk doing the same they (the terrorists) are doing, killing innocent people in an effort to get at them.”

Reagan also disclosed that he intends to extend his attendance at the economic summit in Bonn in early May to include a state visit to West Germany.

He said that plans for celebrating the 40th anniversary in May of the Allied victory in World War II are still undecided, and he made a special point of expressing a willingness to include West Germany in those celebrations. VE Day, he said, should not be “the rejoicing of a victor” but rather recognized as “the day that democracy and freedom and peace began, and friendship between erstwhile enemies.”

Reagan said the Administration has not yet decided whether to dismantle enough strategic weapons to stay under levels set in the unratified SALT II treaty, once new Trident missile-carrying submarines put to sea for trials next fall. The Administration has said it intends to abide by SALT II limits as long as the Soviets also do so. Reagan noted Saturday that there is growing apprehension that the Soviets may already have surpassed those limits in some areas.