Ex-Presidents Join With Soviet Ambassador : Carter, Ford Support A-Test Ban Treaty

Two former presidents and the Soviet Union’s ambassador to the United States agreed Friday that the time has come to negotiate a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty between the military superpowers.

Nearly seven years after the last negotiations on the subject ended, former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford and Soviet envoy Anatoly F. Dobrynin called for their resumption, Ford calling such an agreement “in the national interests of the United States and the other nations of the world” and Carter saying that new negotiations aimed at stopping all nuclear weapons tests could have “a great chance for success.”

Their comments came at an arms control seminar co-chaired by Carter and Ford and attended by diplomatic and military leaders and political figures from more than half a dozen countries, including the Soviet Union, China and Britain.

Dobrynin, heading the Soviet delegation, brought up the subject of a comprehensive test ban during a wide-ranging panel discussion, saying that the Soviets had tried repeatedly during the “last two or three years” to resurrect the three-way talks, which also include the British. “We are prepared to resume those negotiations tomorrow, but the answer was, ‘No, No, No,’ ” he said.

Never Ratified

The United States and the Soviet Union negotiated a threshold nuclear test ban agreement in 1974, but it has never been ratified by the U.S. Senate. The 1978 discussions on a comprehensive test ban ended during a stalemate over Britain’s acceptance of 10 detection stations within its territory to identify nuclear explosions.

The limited test ban agreement now in effect was negotiated by the John F. Kennedy Administration, and it prohibits all atmospheric testing of nuclear arms.

With the threshold test ban agreement still awaiting Senate ratification, Japanese Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe has recently suggested a new approach--of gradually reducing the threshold limit as technology for test detection improves. Carter heartily endorsed that approach at the same time he called for talks aimed at a total test ban.

The meeting bringing Soviet and American officials and arms experts together for public discussions was the third session co-hosted by Carter and Ford in recent years. Participants in the so-called “consultation” held three days of private talks on the campus of Emory University here before the sessions were opened to the press and the public Friday.

Pointed Exchanges

The public meetings, though analytic, produced several pointed exchanges not only between Americans and the Soviet delegation, but between U. S. representatives themselves.

Dobrynin, delivering the main Soviet response, accused the United States of pursuing a relentless policy aimed at strategic nuclear superiority. He denounced the Reagan Administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative--the so-called “Star Wars” plan--which, he said, only assures that the “arms race will become more intensive.” He said the U.S. deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe will not produce “one iota of security.”

He called U.S. policy over the last five years a “legacy of the Cold War,” and said the relationship between Washington and Moscow “is tense, complicated and unstable.”

Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman Jr., the chief representative of the Reagan Administration in attendance, predicted that the Soviet Union will eventually come around to recognize that the Strategic Defense Initiative reflects a policy of “protecting the population rather than avenging it,” and he said strategic defense “is going to lead us toward a much more stabilizing future.”

‘Basis of Common Sense’

The Administration’s arms buildup, he insisted, has given the Soviet Union new incentive for serious arms reduction talks, “re-establishing the basis to pursue reductions on the basis of common sense.”

Both Carter and Ford took issue with Lehman’s analysis. Carter called it a clear explanation of the Reagan Administration’s “radical departure” from the arms policies of the Carter, Ford and Richard M. Nixon administrations. Ford, upset at Lehman’s crediting the Reagan Administration with launching the MX missile and B-1 bomber programs, told Lehman: “You either misunderstood or you didn’t tell the truth.”

The Administration’s “Star Wars” program, one panel concluded during its three days of private talks, has already complicated the arms control process.

“Even should strategic defenses prove feasible,’ said John F. Howe, an official of the British Defense Ministry, “they will undermine the credibility of the NATO strategy of flexible response. If defense of population centers against strategic nuclear attack proves feasible for the United States and the Soviet Union, Western Europe would still be exposed to conventional attack against which there could be no nuclear response or deterrence.”