Shultz Criticizes Kremlin on Arms : Charges SALT II Violation, Suggests Soviets See Talks as Propaganda Ploy

In a break with the Reagan Administration’s conciliatory approach toward the new Soviet leadership, Secretary of State George P. Shultz on Sunday accused Moscow of violating an existing arms control agreement and suggested that the Kremlin is approaching the just-renewed Geneva arms talks as a propaganda exercise.

Shultz said that the Kremlin breached the SALT II agreement by developing two new intercontinental ballistic missiles instead of the single new ICBM that each country was permitted under that accord. But he conceded that Moscow considers its work on one of the two to be a “modernization” of an earlier missile, which would be permitted.

The two new Soviet weapons are similar to the U.S. 10-warhead MX, which is allowed under the treaty. The MX was originally designed as a mobile missile, but no acceptable mobile basing plan was found and the Reagan Administration decided to put the MX in fixed silos.

“To me, (the Soviet missile) is a clear new missile,” Shultz said, though “there are questions about whether in a purely technical sense it fits within treaty language as might be interpreted by a lawyer.”

Tone Is Harsher

Shultz’s tone was harsher than the stance that he and other top Administration officials have adopted since Mikhail S. Gorbachev succeeded the late Konstantin U. Chernenko as Soviet Communist Party leader. At a press conference Friday, for instance, Shultz carefully avoided any sort of rhetoric that might be considered offensive by Moscow.

Asked Sunday if the United States considered the Soviet Union to be an “expansionist, military power,” Shultz replied in the affirmative.

“The two ideologies (of the Soviet Union and the United States) are not compatible,” he said, possibly signaling the end of the U.S. honeymoon with Gorbachev less than a week after the 54-year-old Politburo member became the top Soviet leader.

Shultz was interviewed on the ABC-TV program “This Week with David Brinkley.” On the same program, Stanislav M. Menshikov, a foreign policy adviser to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, denied that the SS-24 missile violated treaty provisions. Taking the offensive, Menshikov said that any testing of space-based defenses against missiles would violate the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty. President Reagan has proposed research on such a system, but any development and testing would be years away.

Shultz complained about comments made by the chief Soviet arms negotiator in a Soviet television interview broadcast Saturday. The negotiator, Viktor P. Karpov, accused the United States of trying to back away from the agreed objectives of the Geneva talks, which began last week.

“If that kind of performance is to mean that the Soviets approach the negotiations as propaganda opportunities, that doesn’t bode very well for the negotiations,” Shultz said.

He admonished Karpov and other Soviet negotiators to abide “by the rules of confidentiality which they have accepted.”

The dispute over the SS-24, a 10-warhead missile capable of being moved to different firing positions on a railroad-type track, has been raging for some time. The United States has contended that development of the missile--which apparently has not yet been deployed--violates the SALT II agreement, which both Moscow and Washington have promised to honor, even though it was never ratified by the U.S. Senate.

Some Administration officials believe that instead of branding the SS-24 as an outright treaty violation, Washington should insist--once the new weapon is deployed--that the Soviets destroy other missiles to stay within the SALT II numerical limits.

However, Shultz rejected that approach Sunday: “The mobility of missiles raises problems of verification because you can’t count them and know where they are.”

Shultz also declined to say whether the United States would remove older submarine-launched missiles from service later this year, when the Trident submarine Alaska joins the fleet. The addition of the new missile-firing submarine would put the United States over the SALT II numerical limits.