Senators Told of Need for Chemical Weapons

The Soviet Union, using short- and long-range missiles, can strike Europe with chemical weapons from the eastern border of West Germany to the English Channel and south to the Mediterranean Sea, a retired general told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.

“We think that is a very grave vulnerability,” said Frederick J. Kroesen, who headed a Pentagon-sponsored study on the probable future of chemical warfare.

Kroesen presented his assessment as Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.), the committee chairman, opened a campaign to win approval for renewed chemical warfare production. Goldwater declared that President Reagan’s budget request for $1.27 billion to improve the Pentagon’s chemical warfare capability should be “an urgent national security priority.”

The request drew little opposition from the committee, particularly from its Republican majority, although the Administration’s previous efforts to win congressional approval to end a 16-year moratorium on chemical weapons production have failed. But congressional sources have predicted that Reagan, who has said the funding request is a high priority, faces a difficult battle.

The committee heard from a series of witnesses who favor the spending plan. Later, legislative director John Isaacs of the Council for a Livable World said in an interview that his group, which opposes the request, believes that the current stockpile of chemical weapons provides a sufficient deterrent to the use of such weapons in Europe by the Soviet Union.

Cumbersome Gear

At the center of the Administration’s plan is a request to spend $207 million to buy “binary” chemical warfare supplies--relatively harmless chemicals that would become lethal only when combined automatically in a bomb or shell shortly before striking a target. Other funding would be devoted to destroying old stocks and to buying protective clothing.

Thomas J. Welch, deputy assistant secretary of defense for atomic energy and chemical matters, said the United States lacks “a militarily useful retaliatory capability,” despite the stockpiles of chemicals stored at the Pine Bluff, Ark., arsenal and at several other sites.

Kroesen, whose report focused on an anticipated Warsaw Pact battle plan for the use of chemical weapons, said North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces face “a very dire threat.”

“We decided the enemy would be militarily foolish if they did not employ chemical weapons,” Kroesen said, citing what he said was NATO’s inability to protect its troops against chemical attack or to threaten retaliation with nerve gas and other chemical poisons that can attack the respiratory, blood and nervous systems.

Faced with “a determined chemical attack,” said Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), the United States and its Western European allies would have two options. “We either surrender or go nuke,” he said.