Soviets Call U.S. Missile Claim a ‘Lie’ : Rejection of Proposed Moratorium Assailed by Tass Commentator

The Kremlin reacted angrily Monday to President Reagan’s swift rejection of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s seven-month moratorium on deployment of its intermediate-range missiles aimed at Western Europe.

A military commentator for Tass, the official news agency, said a White House assertion that the Soviet Union holds a 10-to-1 warhead edge over the West in the medium-range category of missiles in Europe is a “gross lie.”

The response by Vladimir Chernyshov, military affairs specialist for Tass, indicated the seriousness with which Gorbachev’s new “peace offensive” is viewed by the Soviet leadership, Western diplomats here said.

Effort to Split Allies

Gorbachev’s initiative is seen by the diplomats as the beginning of another determined effort to drive a wedge between the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies over the issue of so-called Euromissile deployment.

Gorbachev launched his initiative Sunday with an interview in the Communist Party newspaper Pravda, declaring that he had responded affirmatively to President Reagan’s invitation to hold summit talks. But he also was sharply critical of the President’s military and arms control policies.

As a gesture of what he called Soviet “good will,” Gorbachev announced a seven-month halt in deployment of triple warhead SS-20 mid-range missiles targeted on Western Europe. He said that extension of the moratorium after November would depend on the United States’ stopping deployment of its Pershing 2 and cruise missiles, each carrying one warhead, in Western Europe under a NATO program.

Soviets Clearly Irked

The language employed by the Tass commentary Monday showed that the Soviet hierarchy was clearly irked by the swift White House dismissal of the moratorium.

Tass said that the United States, ignoring “the American forward-based nuclear systems”--those carried by aircraft and submarines--and excluding the separate British and French systems “as if they were nonexistent,” employed “stale arguments” to reject Gorbachev’s initiative.

“It is an unobjective view to put it mildly, or a gross lie to put it straight,” Tass said. “Deluding the public and carrying on its policy from strength, Washington stubbornly claims that it would continue to build up its medium-range missiles in Europe. It is an irresponsible and dangerous policy.”

The Soviet Union has deployed an estimated 414 SS-20 missiles, two-thirds of them in Europe and the rest in Asia.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is scheduled to deploy 572 medium-range missiles, has sited about 110 in West Germany, Italy, Britain and Belgium, according to official sources in Washington.

Only the Netherlands among the five NATO nations scheduled to receive the U.S. missiles has not yet deployed any, and the Hague said Monday that it will stick to a plan to deploy cruise missiles in November.

“Holland will deploy its quota of 48 cruise missiles in November if the number of Soviet SS-20 medium-range weapons cited by then exceeds the 378 that were in place on June 1 last year,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Dutch-Soviet Talks

Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister Hans van den Broek is scheduled to arrive in Moscow today to discuss missile deployment with Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko.

Chernyshov, the Tass military commentator, argued that “a rough parity” had existed in Europe before NATO began to deploy the U.S. missiles in 1983 and said that Washington’s negative reaction to Gorbachev’s proposal shows that the Administration “wishes neither this, nor the other--neither the arms reduction, nor the renunciation of the arms buildup.”

In his interview with Pravda, Gorbachev committed himself publicly to a summit with Reagan, disclosing to the Soviet people for the first time that a conference with the American President is being considered.

O’Neill Backs Summit

Gorbachev mentioned no date or place for the meeting, saying, as Washington has done, that details are still under discussion.

Tass’ harsh commentary Monday ended on a conciliatory note, with Chernyshov writing that the time has come “not to miss possibilities to improve Soviet-American relations and the international situation in general.”

House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr., who heads a delegation of congressmen on a visit to the Soviet Union, said Monday that he welcomes the apparent agreement for a Reagan-Gorbachev meeting.

“I think it augurs well for world peace when the two dominant nations of the world can get at the table and sit down,” O’Neill told reporters.

The Massachusetts Democrat, accompanied by 12 other House members, has said that he expects to meet Gorbachev, probably Wednesday, before the delegation departs for Leningrad.

House Republican Leader Robert H. Michel of Illinois challenged Gorbachev’s proposal that the United States halt deployment of its missiles in Europe in response to Gorbachev’s declared moratorium.

“It would seem to me like freezing an imbalance in favor of the Soviet Union,” Michel said in a reported exchange with members of the Supreme Soviet, this country’s nominal legislature.