Soviets’ Stance Called Absurd : ‘Star Wars’ Opposition a Ploy, Nitze Declares

The Soviet demand that the United States abandon research into President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative as the price of progress in the Geneva arms talks amounts to “propaganda” aimed at maintaining an existing Soviet “monopoly” in anti-missile defenses, the Administration’s senior arms control adviser said Sunday.

Paul H. Nitze forcefully rejected a widespread view in arms control circles that Reagan policies are aggressively designed to push the Soviets to stalemate in the Geneva talks. He declared that the Soviets have long since agreed that “it is impossible by treaty to limit research,” no matter what they now say publicly.

‘Unilateral Capability’

“So I would take with a grain of salt these threats that the Soviets make, which are for a very direct purpose . . . for maintaining for themselves a unilateral capability,” Nitze told the ABC-TV interview program “This Week with David Brinkley.”

On the same program, Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia, ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, declared it “an absurdity” to accept at face value Soviet claims that the United States alone is pressing for a defense against strategic weapons.

Nunn, a member of the legislative observer team in Geneva for the start of the talks on Tuesday, also said the Soviet side must show the first signs of negotiating flexibility if the talks are to succeed. The United States may eventually face “hard choices,” he said--but only if the Soviets agree to limit their heavy, land-based missiles and demonstrate that they have not violated past arms agreements.

On NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press,” Gary Hart, the Colorado senator who is expected to run in 1988 for the Democratic presidential nomination he lost last year, endorsed the general concept of the Strategic Defense Initiative, but faulted the Administration for throwing so much money at it that it will “choke the research pipeline.”

Taken in sum, these bipartisan views amounted to a challenge to the view widespread among arms control specialists that it is up to the West to bring flexibility to Geneva and that the President’s proposal for a space-based defense system--nicknamed “Star Wars”--will hopelessly complicate the negotiations.

Nunn, who has said he will continue to back the Administration on the MX missile and is generally stronger than many Democrats in his support of an increased U.S. military capability, also joined Nitze in his belief that the Soviets are violating the 1972 ABM treaty limiting anti-ballistic missiles. There has been no “satisfactory explanation,” he said, for Soviet construction of a massive radar system at Krasnoyarsk in Siberia.

Treaty Violation

“I negotiated the ABM treaty,” said Nitze, “and I have no doubt about the fact that the Krasnoyarsk radar is certainly a violation of the treaty.”

Nunn told the ABC interviewers that if the three-pronged Geneva talks on strategic weapons, Europe-based intermediate-range missiles and strategic defense are to succeed, “the Soviets are going to have to do some things in these talks that they have never done before.”

He elaborated: “I think they are going to have to . . . convince us they are complying with the existing treaties or . . . correct any violations of those existing treaties.

“Second, they are going to have to be willing to cut back very significantly on their large heavy missiles--the SS-18s and SS-19s.

“Third, they’re going to have to recognize that you cannot really subject research, as opposed to development and testing, to an arms control agreement because it can’t be verified.

Aware of Soviet Research

“And I would say, lastly, they are going to have to understand that we already know they’re doing comprehensive research in strategic defense, and for them to pretend that only the United States is moving in this direction is somewhat of an absurdity.”

It was on Nunn’s final point that Nitze sharply rejected the Soviet stand on strategic defense and questioned Moscow’s motives. By seeking to block research into strategic defense, Nitze said, “they are trying to cause us to abandon a research program which is comparable to a research program that they’ve had for many years.”

“No, they’re not bluffing,” he added. “They’re very expert in the field of propaganda . . . . They would like us to unilaterally abandon a research program similar to the one that they have been conducting. They were the first ones to go into the field of particle beam research; they were the first ones to go into the field of high-powered lasers.

“They’d like to have a monopoly in that field--and why not? If I were they, if I were on the Central Committee, I would agree: It’s much better to have a monopoly.”

Nitze also described the three-phase conceptual framework he has devised for U.S. strategic arms control. It was presented to Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko when Secretary of State George P. Shultz met him in Geneva last January, and it has since been made public in Administration speeches and policy statements.

In this concept, a first phase of 10 years or longer would focus on maintaining the existing deterrent balance of offensive strategic weapons. The next phase would involve a negotiated transition to a more stable balance between offensive and defensive strategic systems. The final phase would be the elimination of nuclear weapons, an eventuality most critics of “Star Wars” scorn as an impossibility.

However, Nitze noted that the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons was first proposed by the Soviets in 1959 and 1960.

“This is a long-term goal set by the U.S.S.R.,” he said. “In those days, it was merely a propaganda goal, because nobody knew how to get from here to there. Today, if (the Strategic Defense Initiative) works, we think there is a way in which it can.”