U.S. Thwarts Talks With ‘Reckless Arms Race’ in Space, Gorbachev Charges

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev today said the United States is thwarting the Geneva arms talks by trying to extend a “reckless arms race” into space.

In a message to a French veterans group, Gorbachev charged that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s continued deployment of U.S.-built medium-range missiles in Europe and the Pentagon’s efforts to develop space-based missile defenses are the biggest obstacles to a superpower arms agreement.

Negotiators for the United States and the Soviet Union have been meeting in the Swiss city of Geneva to negotiate on nuclear missiles and space-based weapons. The talks are currently in recess.

A text of Gorbachev’s message to the National Council of the French Republican Assn. of War Veterans and Victims was carried by the official press agency Tass.

Greater Hazard Seen

“Unfortunately . . . judging from the first stage of the Geneva negotiations, U.S. representatives so far have displayed no desire to reach agreement,” the Soviet leader said. “Another thing is evident: The U.S.A. is carrying on a reckless arms race and actively trying to project it to space.”

In an interview published Sunday, Soviet Defense Minister Sergei L. Sokolov said the U.S. “Star Wars” research program poses a greater hazard to peace than the atomic bomb.

Sokolov told the military newspaper Red Star that it was “outright demagoguery” for the Pentagon to say the Strategic Defense Initiative, commonly called “Star Wars,” would make nuclear weapons obsolete.

Denies Soviet Program

Sokolov denied that the Soviets are researching their own space-based anti-missile system.

He said Soviet military scientific research is restricted to “perfection of space early warning, reconnaissance, communication and navigation systems.”

“We are not creating strike space weapons and anti-missile defense of the territory of the country,” Sokolov said.

The interview was Sokolov’s first major statement on Soviet military policy since he became defense minister last Dec. 22, two days after the death of his predecessor, Marshal Dmitri F. Ustinov.