Geneva Talks Focus on Space : U.S., Soviets Concentrate on This Weapons Issue

After two weeks of preliminary discussions, the Geneva arms control talks moved into a more intensive phase Tuesday as U.S. and Soviet negotiators held their first session devoted solely to a single issue--space arms.

A U.S. spokesman said later that the session lasted three hours and that the killing of a U.S. Army major in East Germany by a Soviet guard on Sunday “has not affected the schedule of these talks.”

Traditionally, neither side has allowed outside events to interrupt nuclear arms negotiations, whether it was the death of a Kremlin leader, such as President Konstantin U. Chernenko’s two weeks ago, or the shooting down of a South Korean airliner in September, 1983.

Recess April 23

Strategic offensive nuclear arms will be discussed next, in a working group today, and then intermediate-range nuclear forces will be taken up by a third working group on Thursday, the spokesman said. This pattern of meetings will continue each week until the first round recesses on April 23.

Judging by established practice, U.S. Ambassador Max M. Kampelman, who flew back to Geneva overnight from Washington after lobbying there for the MX missile, began the space arms meeting Tuesday with a more detailed exposition of the Administration’s controversial “Star Wars” research program into space defenses.

Soviet negotiator Yuli A. Kvitsinsky, in turn, responded with more detailed probings of the U.S. project, which is aimed at substituting a space-based defense for the policy of “mutually assured destruction” as a way of maintaining the peace.

In keeping with their agreement to keep their exchanges confidential, neither side provided details of the session itself. But with remarkable timing, a Soviet official, Viktor L. Issraelyan, delivered a speech on space arms to the 40-nation U.N. Disarmament Committee meeting here Tuesday. He assailed “Star Wars” and repeated Moscow’s demand for a ban on the “development, testing and deployment of all space weapons.”

Space arms will be the knottiest issue of the three-part negotiations. The negotiators have probably not yet agreed even on a definition of the weapons under discussion, let alone what to do about violations of and loopholes in the 1972 anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty that will be an early focus of the talks.

The United States has said it will seek to halt the “erosion” of the ABM treaty by such Soviet actions as construction of a huge new radar installation near Krasnoyarsk, in Siberia, in alleged violation of the 1972 agreement.

The Soviets, for their part, will presumably seek to close the loophole that permits deployment of anti-satellite weapons. And both sides may seek to stop deployment of interceptor missiles that can knock down short-range missile warheads, since such systems can potentially be upgraded swiftly to shield against intermediate-range and long-range warheads, thus circumventing the ABM agreement.

The expected debate over a definition of space arms will be more than wrangling over a legalism.

Soviet Intent

In every arms negotiation so far, the Soviets have attempted to define the issue in terms that made their weapons appear peaceful and U.S. weapons aggressive. The same tactic is expected here in view of Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko’s discussion with Secretary of State George P. Shultz in January, when the two sides agreed upon the current negotiations.

“Space arms,” Gromyko said, “are arms in space designed to attack objects in space and on Earth, and arms on Earth designed to attack objects in space.” Each time he cited the definition, he referred to a paper to ensure that the lengthy formulation was always the same.

The key issue centers on “designed to,” for the Soviets always insist that their weapons are not intended to be harmful, whatever their capability. The United States has always insisted on dealing with the capabilities of weapons, since their intent cannot be known.

In the past, a compromise has always been reached. In the case of the ABM treaty, for example, the prohibited weapons are those “constructed and deployed for an ABM role, or of a type tested in an ABM mode.”

But it took several months during the negotiations to thrash out that language. The ABM treaty itself prohibits both sides from developing, testing and deploying an anti-ballistic missile system, or “components” of such a system, that are based on the sea, in the air, in space, or on mobile land vehicles. Only fixed land-based systems are permitted, and only 100 interceptor missiles are allowed for each side.

Testing Permission

Some “Star Wars” proponents believe that the components are so vaguely defined in the treaty that some testing of space-based sensors and perhaps other pieces of a “Star Wars” system might be legally permitted.

The largest loopholes in the anti-ballistic missile treaty, however, deal with anti-satellite weapons and the anti-tactical missile systems. These may require entire new agreements to correct, if in fact both sides want them corrected.

The loopholes arise because the anti-ballistic missile treaty deals only with strategic or intercontinental missiles and bombers. Defensive weapons against shorter range missiles and against satellites are not mentioned in its provisions.

Any intercontinental missile can also be an anti-satellite weapon, however, since it can be exploded in space to destroy a satellite as easily as it can be directed against a distant land target. Curbing anti-satellite weapons without interfering with existing strategic arms treaties will therefore be difficult at best. The Soviets are expected to argue for a ban on weapons “intended to” hit satellites, while the U.S. position will be to insist on dealing with weapons “capable of” hitting satellites.

Dual-Role Missiles

At the same time, weapons designed specifically to be directed against satellites, such as the Soviet system already in operation and the U.S. system now in development, are also capable of being ABM weapons, able to intercept hostile warheads in their mid-course trajectory, when they are akin to satellites for a time.

Greater difficulty lies in trying to control anti-tactical missile systems. The Soviets have already tested such a system against their Scaleboard tactical missile, which has a range of more than 550 miles, according to Raymond Garthof, a former U.S. arms negotiator now at the Brookings Institution.

A Scaleboard warhead re-enters the atmosphere at a shallow angle and speeds of perhaps two or three times the speed of sound (760 m.p.h. at sea level). Intermediate range missiles such as the U.S. Pershing 2 and the Soviet SS-20 re-enter at steeper angles and at twice that speed. Submarine launched missiles and intercontinental missiles come in at even sharper angles and faster velocities (up to 20 times the speed of sound), which makes an interception far more difficult.

But all of these anti-missile systems constitute a continuum of weapons. The anti-tactical missiles provide not only a head start toward anti-ballistic missiles but are potentially capable of being upgraded quickly to become ABMs if one side or the other sought to suddenly break out of the ABM treaty.