Soviet Bloc Leaders Renew Warsaw Pact

Leaders of the seven Warsaw Pact nations agreed Friday at a ceremonial summit to extend the Soviet-led military alliance for up to 30 more years and declared that its only objective is to preserve world peace.

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev used the occasion to renew Moscow’s offer to the United States in the Geneva arms control talks to accept deep, reciprocal cuts in offensive strategic weapons. But he said that this would depend on the United States’ abandoning its program of research on missile defenses in space.

“We have already suggested that both sides reduce strategic offensive arms by one-quarter by way of an opening move,” Gorbachev said at a banquet that followed the summit.

“But we would have no objections to making deeper mutual cuts. All this is possible if the arms race does not begin in space, if it is peaceful,” he said, according to a text released by Tass, the official Soviet news agency.

The text of the 30-year-old treaty, which binds most of Eastern Europe to the military and political dictates of the Soviet Union, was left unchanged from the agreement first signed May 14, 1955. The treaty was due to expire next month.

Heavy Security at Summit

The one-day summit, carried out in an atmosphere of ritual formality amid heavy security in Warsaw, reiterated Warsaw Pact positions toward the Western Alliance.

“Parties to the Warsaw treaty will continue to fight to head off the dangers of nuclear war in the world . . . and restore the process of detente and cooperation in international relations,” according to a joint communique signed by the leaders of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev disputed Western arguments that Moscow’s seven-month moratorium on deploying SS-20 missiles aimed at Western Europe would simply freeze in place a huge Soviet advantage in warheads of medium-range missiles. He said that the Soviet Union had a right to expect similar “restraint” by the United States and its European allies in deploying their own missiles.

“We do not hold such an edge,” Gorbachev insisted, in remarks that struck a milder tone than he did earlier this week in Moscow when he accused the United States of reneging on an agreement to include space weapons in the Geneva talks. On Friday, he said simply that the first round of the talks showed that they are proceeding “with difficulty.”

Echoing the Warsaw Pact communique, Gorbachev bestowed elaborate praise on the 30-year-old alliance, the formal name of which is the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance.

‘Friendly Mutual Assistance’

“History has known no other alliance like ours, in which relations are based on full equality and friendly mutual assistance of sovereign states, an alliance which in the full sense of the word is an alliance of nations, an alliance which threatens no one and fully serves to defend peace,” Gorbachev declared.

Under the treaty, the Soviet Union maintains 565,000 of its 5 million troops in East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, nations whose own national armies, together with those of Bulgaria and Romania, number 1.2 million men.

The only combined military action in the 30-year history of the Warsaw Pact, apart from regular maneuvers, was directed against one of its own members. Warsaw Pact forces, with the exception of those of Romania, invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 to suppress the liberal reform movement by the Czechoslovak Communist Party known as the “Prague Spring.” The invasion made clear that participation in the pact, and adherence to Moscow’s political dictates, is not voluntary.

The Soviet Union and other pact members, however, officially describe the invasion as “fraternal assistance,” fully consistent with the treaty.

Only two countries in Eastern Europe are not members. Communist Yugoslavia has pursued an independent course since the end of World War II, and tiny, isolated Albania succeeded in withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact in 1968 to protest the Czech invasion.

Renewal Never in Doubt

Renewal of the treaty was never in doubt, although rumors circulated in Eastern Europe for months that Hungary and Romania wanted changes in the text, including a shorter duration.

The protocol extending the existing treaty was signed in the same ornate hall of the 18th-Century Radzwill Palace where the agreement was originally signed May 14, 1955.

“The treaty . . . remains in force for the period of another 20 years,” a text of the protocol released by the Polish news agency PAP said. As in the original treaty, the protocol provides for an automatic renewal for another 10 years in the absence of an agreement to disband the pact, stretching its lifetime to the year 2015.

The Warsaw Pact was formed six years after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in response to NATO’s admission of a rearmed West Germany. In its communique Friday, the seven Warsaw Pact governments repeated a standing offer to dissolve the alliance if NATO will also disband.

Western officials, noting that an American pullout from Europe would leave the Soviet Union with a huge military advantage by virtue of its proximity, have always dismissed this offer as a propaganda ploy.

Signed by East Bloc Leaders

In addition to Gorbachev, the protocol extending the treaty was signed by Todor Zhivkov of Bulgaria, Gustav Husak of Czechoslovakia, Erich Honecker of East Germany, Janos Kadar of Hungary, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski of Poland, and Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania.

The commander of the Warsaw Pact forces, Soviet Marshal Viktor G. Kulikov, also attended the ceremony, along with foreign ministers, defense ministers and premiers of the seven countries. Western reporters and photographers were barred from the summit and the signing ceremony, but Polish television gave it extensive coverage.