Satellite Blast Would Violate Treaty: Soviets

The Soviet Union today said President Reagan’s decision to go ahead with anti-satellite missile testing violates a treaty guaranteeing the peaceful use of space.

“The holding of such tests runs counter to the international treaty on the guarding principles of the use of space, the treaty signed by the United States,” official Moscow radio said.

The criticism apparently referred to a 1967 treaty on outer space, signed in London, Washington and Moscow.

That treaty banned “weapons of mass destruction” from orbits around the Earth. But neither U.S. nor Soviet anti-satellite weapons fit that description.

Reagan said Tuesday that he had authorized the first of three tests of a weapon to be fired at a satellite from an F-15 jet fighter. (Story, Page 8.)

The United States says the test program is needed because the Soviet Union already has a functioning, although more primitive, anti-satellite weapon.

The Soviet media--which called the U.S. announcement the “start of the Reagan Star Wars program”--also renewed its appeal for a moratorium on all nuclear weapons testing.

“It is important to consider that problem seriously and without delay, in particular in view of the forthcoming Soviet-U.S. summit meeting,” the Communist Party newspaper Pravda said.

Moscow began a unilateral five-month moratorium on Aug. 6, the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and said it would extend the ban if the United States did the same.