New Nerve Gas Weapons OKd by Conferees

House and Senate negotiators late Thursday approved allowing the United States to begin producing chemical weapons for the first time since 1969, but House Armed Services Committee members are expected to press for another House vote on the issue.

The agreement, which now must go to each house for final approval, emerged as the conferees smoothed out the last of more than 1,000 differences over 1986 defense authorization legislation and approved the bill.

The compromise nerve gas provision--which had bogged down the conference committee for days--is included in a bill that authorizes $302.5 billion in Pentagon spending next year.

House Gives In

But, to achieve the agreement, the House was forced to give in on at least one significant restriction it had insisted on when it approved its version of the bill last month: The compromise does not include a House-passed provision requiring that nerve gas production be delayed until the North Atlantic Treaty Organization officially requests it to replace chemical weapons now in Europe.

However, other restrictions passed by the House were retained, including a ban on assembling the weapons before October, 1987.

Full details of the bill, which was approved by voice vote in a closed session, will not be made public until today. However, sources who attended the meeting said that House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.) plans to ask the House Rules Committee to allow a separate House vote on the weakened chemical weapons provision.

The chemical weapons were the only major weapons that Congress denied to President Reagan during his first term. He had sought funds for production of the weapons in all four years, but the House rejected the requests by hefty margins, and its position had prevailed when the bill reached House-Senate conference committees.

The weapons, known as “binary” munitions, are artillery shells and aerial bombs containing two chemicals that are harmless alone but form nerve gas when combined.

Danger Cited

The Administration, saying that U.S. chemical weapons stockpiled before 1969 have deteriorated and become dangerous, argued that renewed production is needed to deter the Soviet Union’s growing stockpile of similar weapons.

Separately, the conference committee approved a set of proposals aimed at slowing the “revolving door,” through which persons who are involved in Pentagon purchasing subsequently obtain jobs from the contractors with whom they have dealt.

Critics have said that purchasing officers who expect to obtain high-paying jobs from Pentagon suppliers have been too lax in dealing with contractors. The result, they say, is that the government often pays much more than it should for items it buys from contractors.

Rep. Charles E. Bennett (D-Fla.) said that the conference committee adopted his proposal that political appointees who act as primary negotiators on Pentagon purchases be barred for two years from employment by contractors with whom they have dealt. Violators would be fined up to $5,000 and could receive prison sentences of up to one year.

Death Penalty Approved

The conferees approved also a House-passed provision allowing the death penalty to be imposed on military personnel found guilty of peacetime espionage, an outgrowth of the Walker spy case, in which four current or former Navy men have been arrested.

Other provisions of the compromise bill that already had been agreed on include:

--The number of MX nuclear missiles that can be deployed would be limited to 50 in existing Minuteman silos--half of the 100 MX weapons President Reagan had sought. Twelve more missiles could be build in fiscal 1986.

--The Pentagon would be authorized to spend $2.75 billion next year for research into the so-called “Star Wars” space-based missile defense system.

--$100 million would be allocated for research into the Midgetman missile, a single-warhead mobile weapon intended as the next generation of U.S. missiles.