East Bloc Leaders Renew Warsaw Pact for 20 Years

Leaders of the Soviet Bloc today signed an agreement extending for two decades the Warsaw Pact, the 30-year alliance that binds the Eastern European nations to the Soviet Union, the official Polish news agency PAP reported.

The military and political alliance would have expired next month without formal renewal.

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed the agreement for the Soviet Union, the agency said.

Later at a reception, the Soviet press agency Tass said, Gorbachev criticized the United States and the NATO alliance for not reciprocating the six-month unilateral Soviet moratorium on the deployment of medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe.

NATO Allies Warned

He also warned the NATO allies of the United States to stay out of the so-called “Star Wars” space weapons research program. He said the world faces a risk of nuclear war that is “multiplied by U.S. military plans in space.”

“No matter what their authors say and how they justify themselves, the essence of these plans is clear--to acquire a possibility to deal the first nuclear blow and do that with impunity,” Gorbachev said.

“The development for Star Wars is just beginning,” he said. “But it is already making the present-day world develop a fever and leading to the destabilization of the entire system of international relations, to even sharper political and military confrontation.”

‘A Sublime Act’

PAP called the signing of the Warsaw Pact extension a “sublime act . . . validating the act on friendship, cooperation and mutual help signed May 14, 1955.”

In addition to the Soviet Union, signatories were Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia.

The Warsaw Pact originally was valid for 20 years and was automatically renewed for another 10 years in 1975. It cannot be extended without formal agreement, because it was set up on May 14, 1955, under the stated principle that military alliances should be done away with and the Warsaw Pact would be dismantled if NATO was disbanded.

The NATO treaty, signed in Washington, D.C., on April 4, 1949, has no expiration date.