Arms Panel Fears Geneva Stalemate Over ‘Star Wars’

An international panel of arms control specialists expressed grave concern Saturday over U.S.-Soviet weapons talks in Geneva, saying they are in danger of “heading for an early stalemate.”

The assessment came in three days of private talks by representatives from the United States, the Soviet Union and West Germany. It was publicly delivered during the final day of a major arms control conference co-sponsored by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford at Emory University here.

The chief reason for the pessimism four weeks after resumption of the Geneva talks is the complications over the Reagan Administration’s plan to research space-based defenses against nuclear missiles.

“The Soviet side appears to be unwilling to consider deep reductions in strategic offensive weapons so long as the possibility of new strategic defensive deployments is not definitively foreclosed,” the panel report said. “The American side wishes to negotiate precisely such deep reductions while holding open the strategic defense option pending completion of research to establish its feasibility.”

Former U.S. arms negotiator Ralph Earle, who headed the panel and delivered the report, said the panelists agreed that both offensive and defensive arms must be taken into account in the negotiations and that unrestrained competition in both fields “would be disastrous.”

The report touched off more than two hours of exchanges in which the Soviet Union was sharply accused of violating existing arms agreements.

Soviet Ambassador Anatoly F. Dobrynin, responding to the complaints, said his country may allow inspection of a controversial radar installation in central Siberia. The United States contends that the radar post, if put into operation, would violate the 1972 treaty limiting missile defense systems.

Construction of the huge phased-array radar, which remains incomplete, was detected in 1983. The facility is described as three times the size of a football field.

U.S. specialists say that it will have the capability of directing a missile defense system, a violation of the 13-year-old accord. They also contend that it is a violation of a treaty provision requiring large radar systems to be on national borders and facing outward.

Insisting that the Siberian installation is being constructed merely to track “Sputniks,” the Soviet space exploration vehicles, Dobrynin said Saturday that “we may even invite you . . . invite some of your skeptics” to inspect the installation when it is completed.

Dobrynin’s comments came after Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), a ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned that the installation is taken as a “very serious violation” of the 1972 treaty.

His concerns were echoed by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and by Kenneth N. Adelman, director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Calling the radar issue “one of the most significant stumbling blocks of my 17 years in the Senate,” Stevens replied to Dobrynin’s hint of opening the installation by saying “this is the time to talk about on-site inspection.”

Nunn complained not only about the radar installation, but about Soviet encrypting of telemetry signals from missile test flights, a violation of the unratified 1979 SALT II agreement limiting offensive nuclear weapons.

He later described Dobrynin’s suggestion that the radar installation might be opened to inspection as “potentially very important” and “potentially a breakthrough.”

Carter said he considers the possible offer “amazing.”

Though he agreed with most of the specifics of the panel’s report, Dobrynin said that he was not discouraged over the state of the Geneva negotiations.

“They are just beginning to talk,” he said of the negotiators. “We aren’t discouraged, and I’m sure the Americans aren’t discouraged either.”

A dozen panelists suggested several ways that negotiators might address the complication over the proposed U.S. space-based defense system, nicknamed “Star Wars.”

Former Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance called for U.S. and Soviet negotiators to seek an understanding on what types of missile defense research would be permitted on the basis of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the accord that limits missile defenses.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was Carter’s national security adviser, suggested that President Reagan and Soviet Communist Party leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev seek some type of interim accord, when and if their proposed summit meeting materializes.

Saying he sees little likelihood that a comprehensive treaty can be negotiated in the near future, Brzezinski said that a Reagan-Gorbachev meeting “would provide an opportunity for a political, not overly complicated limited interim agreement that would serve as a catalyst” for a comprehensive pact.

The five-day session arranged by the two former Presidents,which attracted arms experts from more than half a dozen countries, was dominated by former officials of the Carter and Ford administrations.

The only representatives of the Reagan Administration taking part in the public discussions were Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. and Adelman, both of whom defended research on space-based defenses.

Dobrynin--while he said that he is not discouraged by the Geneva negotiations--complained that U.S. negotiators have refused to get into substantive discussion of the proposed U.S. strategic defense system.

The Soviet Union, he said, is “not prepared to go very drastically” into the discussions on offensive weapons until it knows more about the United States’ strategic defense program.

Speaking for the Administration, Adelman denied that the United States has avoided substantive discussion of strategic defenses.

“Contrary to what Ambassador Dobrynin said, we are discussing it,” Adelman told the conference, saying that U.S. officials had discussed the subject with Soviet representatives “at great length” early this year and had agreed that defensive research could not be verified.

Despite the panel’s emphasis on the difficulty facing Geneva negotiators, one participant saw new opportunity.

“There is the making of a grand bargain in Soviet fears of the Strategic Defense Initiative and our fear of excessive Soviet deployments,” said McGeorge Bundy, who served as national security adviser to President John F. Kennedy and briefly to President Lyndon B. Johnson. Bundy said the superpowers should “trade those fears in a hard bargain at Geneva.”