Gromyko ‘Disappoints’ Dutch Foreign Minister : Van den Broek Says Nation Has Little Choice but to Accept U.S. Cruise Missile Deployment

Dutch Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek held a “disappointing” meeting today with his Soviet counterpart, Andrei A. Gromyko, and said afterward that his nation has little choice but to accept U.S. cruise missiles.

Van den Broek told a news conference that the Soviet Union’s decision to freeze deployment of its missiles aimed at Western Europe until November is unlikely to persuade the Dutch Parliament not to accept its allotted share of U.S. missiles under a NATO plan.

Western diplomats had interpreted the Soviet moratorium, announced Sunday by leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, as an effort to influence the Nov. 1 vote in the Dutch Parliament on whether to accept 48 cruise missiles it had earlier pledged to deploy.

1979 NATO Agreement

NATO agreed in 1979 to station 572 Pershing 2 and cruise missiles in five European countries to respond to the Soviets’ 1977 decision to deploy the triple-warhead SS-20s. West Germany, Britain and Italy began their deployments in late 1983 and Belgium joined last month.

The Dutch Parliament voted last June not to deploy the U.S. weapons if the number of Soviet SS-20s remained steady between June, 1984, and November, 1985. The governments of both Belgium and Holland have been under heavy pressure by peace groups not to accept the U.S. missiles.

According to U.S. figures released in March, the Soviets have 414 operating SS-20s--about two-thirds trained on targets in Europe and the rest on Asia--compared to 378 when the Soviets walked out of Geneva arms control talks in late 1983. New talks resumed last month in Geneva.

Not Very Positive

“I can say the reply of my Soviet colleague was somewhat disappointing, and I doubt very much whether this appeal as such has been very positive,” Van den Broek said after three hours of talks with Gromyko.

“If it proves that the number of SS-20s (next Nov. 1) is higher than (last June 1), then for the Netherlands it is inevitable that it has to accept the intermediate-range systems on its territory.”

He said that Gorbachev’s decision to order the freeze “implies recognition that the deployment of SS-20s since June last year has continued because if not, I couldn’t understand what the exact sense is of the proposal made. It was useful and informative to have these discussions even if at the end of the day we had an agreement to disagree.”

He said he told Gromyko that Holland supports the research stage of President Reagan’s “Star Wars” space defense program. He said he emphasized that since research cannot be verified, it is impossible to impose restrictions on it.