Weinberger Assures Europe of ‘Star Wars’ Protection

U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, in remarks read by an assistant Sunday, said “there can be no retreat” from Reagan Administration plans to develop a space-based defense system designed to protect the United States and its European allies from nuclear missile attack.

Weinberger said that President Reagan’s proposed Strategic Defense Initiative--nicknamed “Star Wars”--will raise the hope that “peace can be maintained not by the threat of nuclear destruction but by a strong defense that could not only deter, but defeat, the most awful offense of all.”

The remarks came in a speech that Weinberger was scheduled to give to an annual meeting of leading North Atlantic Treaty Organization defense officials, diplomats and foreign policy specialists. Bad weather delayed Weinberger in London, and his address was delivered by the assistant U.S. defense secretary, Richard N. Perle.

U.S. officials have been trying to assure NATO allies that space-based defenses, if found to be technologically workable, would also protect Western Europe.

“The real issue, you might argue, is whether Europeans will become hostages to the Soviet Union as the United States retreats to an illusory fortress across the ocean,” Weinberger said.

“There is no fortress, and there can be no retreat. America could not survive, nor live, in a world in which Europe was overrun and conquered.”

Responding to critics who say the program will be too expensive and accelerate the militarization of space, Weinberger said the plan “would provide insurance against a world in which the Soviets--and the Soviets alone--could brandish their sword from behind the protective (missile defense) shield they are continuing to develop.”

U.S. Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) another conference participant, criticized the space weapons plan, saying it would be dangerous to believe “a technological fix could be a solution to a fundamentally diplomatic and military problem--namely the nuclear arms race.” However, Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Maine) said he believes that despite a $28 billion price tag, research on space-based defense will receive bipartisan support in Congress.

U.S. representatives at the conference have invited the Europeans to take part in the research.

In his speech, Weinberger said prospects of space-based defense will spur negotiations to “end this spiraling accumulation of offensive, destabilizing nuclear weapons.”

On Saturday, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said the strategic defense program has motivated the Soviet Union to return to arms control negotiations.

British and French officials expressed opposition to the plan. French Defense Minister Charles Hernu said in another address that it would trigger a dangerous new drive for offensive arms able to “overwhelm” a space defense.

Geoffrey Pattie, British minister of state for industry and information, said he fears the program could lead to a massive rise in military spending.

Despite the absence of any clear idea in the United States of what form the space defense concept would take, some Europeans were already eagerly trying to sniff out the rewards, he said.