Nitze Briefs NATO on Soviet Arms Bid

Paul H. Nitze, President Reagan’s senior adviser on arms control, briefed ambassadors of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Wednesday on the Soviet Union’s new weapons reduction proposal and cautioned that it might mean “something quite different” from what the public believes.

After meeting with the NATO Council, Nitze told reporters that the Soviets have given the United States additional information about the proposals and said American officials will study the “fine print” before taking a position. Yet he agreed that the cuts Moscow wants “could be positive.”

The heart of the Soviet offer is a proposal calling for each side to reduce by 50% the number of nuclear weapons that can reach each other’s territory. The Soviet plan also calls for a ban on the deployment of space-based weapons.

The Kremlin proposal was floated in Paris by Mikhail S. Gorbachev last week and presented in detail by the Soviet delegation to the arms talks in Geneva.

Nitze noted that the offer deals with weapons delivery systems such as missiles, and not with nuclear warheads. “Certainly a 50% reduction in arms could be positive,” he said. “But the way in which they define the arms has been strategic nuclear delivery systems capable . . . of striking at the territory of the other side. It is a carefully defined term . . . which means something quite different than what the public would assume it means.”

Such a cut would mean a 50% reduction in both intercontinental ballistic missiles in the United States and intermediate-range missiles in Europe. But the Soviets would be forced to cut only intercontinental systems, not their intermediate-range SS-20 missiles targeted on Western Europe.