Soviets Blame U.S. for Lack of Progress at Arms Talks

The Soviet Union, in a toughly worded commentary shortly before the start of the second round of nuclear arms control talks in Geneva, on Sunday blamed the United States for the lack of progress so far and indicated no willingness in the Kremlin to compromise.

The commentary, to be published as an editorial today in the Communist Party newspaper Pravda, said that Washington can expect no movement from Moscow on strategic and medium-range missiles until the United States retreats from President Reagan’s Strategic Defensive Initative, nicknamed “Star Wars.”

Pravda said the United States “cannot count on any reduction whatsoever by the Soviet Union of its return-strike nuclear arms while Washington is furthering its program of measures to ‘render impotent’ Soviet nuclear arms in the hope of acquiring the ability to carry out aggression with impunity.”

The commentary repeated standing Soviet charges that the United States is seeking to develop defensive space weapons as a shield behind which to launch a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union.

Citing what it called U.S. obstructionism at Geneva, the commentary said: “In practice, the United States has no intention at all to reduce its nuclear arsenals.

“True, in the process, Washington is trying to put on the appearance that it supposedly stands for a reduction of nuclear arms. But this is total eyewash.

“What has the first round of the talks shown? Its results cannot be described as satisfactory,” said the commentary, carried by the official Tass news agency in advance of today’s publication. The Geneva talks are scheduled to resume Thursday.

Pravda said that Washington is failing to abide by an accord reached in January to negotiate curbs on space arms and other weapons in good faith.

“Nobody, of course, expected the entire complex of problems of space and nuclear arms to be solved in the course of six weeks,” it observed, but added: “The position of the American side, however, was void of any elements of constructiveness whatsoever and actually ran counter to the meaning of the January accord on the aims and subject of the talks.”

The United States, at a meeting between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko in January, agreed to discuss “Star Wars” but rejected a Soviet demand that research on the controversial program be dropped. It also urged that difficulty on any single issue should not hinder progress on other aspects of the arms control talks.

The chief U.S. negotiator, Max M. Kampelman, told North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies in Brussels last month that the first round of talks involved no real bargaining by either side. He said it was taken up with procedural matters and the presentation and probing of opening positions on space and nuclear weapons.

U.S. officials have described the talks as difficult and slow-moving and have emphasized that positive results will require patience on the part of the Western allies.

In the area of offensive strategic weapons, the Pravda editorial contended that the United States, although willing to reduce land- and sea-based ballistic missiles, “evades” a Soviet proposal to ban all varieties of long-range cruise missiles. It said U.S. negotiators have indicated willingness so far to limit only air-launched cruise missiles, presumably leaving the sea- and ground-launched versions without limits.

The third area of the Geneva talks covers medium-range missiles--ground-launched cruise and Pershing 2 missiles in Europe and Soviet SS-20s targeted mainly on Western Europe. The U.S. position here was “non-constructive as well,” the commentary asserted.

It said that the Soviet Union has offered to reduce its warheads “gradually” to equal the number of warheads deployed on British and French missiles if the United States will withdraw the cruise and Pershing missiles now being deployed in Western Europe under a NATO program.

Britain’s nuclear arsenal consists of 64 mid-range missiles deployed aboard submarines. France has 80 medium-range missiles deployed on submarines and 18 on land. The Soviet Union has deployed an estimated 414 multiple-warhead SS-20 missiles, two-thirds of them in Europe and the rest in Asia.

The United States, Pravda continued, still refuses to count the British and French missiles as a basis for agreement, is unwilling to include U.S. carrier-based aircraft in the controls and insists that SS-20 missiles in the Soviet Far East also come under any control agreement.

“Obviously, this is not a basis for agreement,” the editorial said, contending that the United States “limits itself only to a repetition of old proposals . . . which have proved their untenability.”