Soviet Forces Chief Warns on ‘Star Wars’

The Soviet military chief of staff, Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, said Friday that Moscow will put nuclear weapons into space if the United States continues to develop a space-based missile defense system.

Akhromeyev’s warning came in a lengthy article that will appear in today’s edition of Pravda, the official newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party. The text of the article was made public Friday night by Tass, the Soviet news agency.

Without a ban on space weapons, Akhromeyev said, an unchecked arms race will begin and the risk of war will be increased substantially.

“The Soviet Union cannot show naivete and count only on peaceful assurances by U.S. leaders which serve as a cover for developing strike weapons in space,” he said. “If that is continued, nothing will remain for us but to adopt countermeasures in the field of both offensive and other, not excluding defensive, armaments, including those based in outer space.”

He said that Washington “underestimates the potentialities of the Soviet Union,” and added that there will be “no American nuclear monopoly in outer space.” He renewed, in vivid language, the Soviet attack on President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, the “Star Wars” program.

“The essence of the American ‘Star Wars’ program,” Akhromeyev said, “boils down to the treacherous aim of giving the United States the potential to make a first nuclear strike at the Soviet Union with impunity, and deprive it, by creating a national anti-missile defense, of the opportunity to make a retaliatory strike.”

Akhromeyev, who is a first deputy minister of defense, denied Reagan’s charge that the Soviets are developing space weapons.

“We do not have a program of creating space strike systems, nor plans of ‘Star Wars’ analogous to the American ones,” he said. “The U.S.S.R. is strictly fulfilling the timeless ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) treaty of 1972. We suggest that the United States join us in this and give up the plans of militarizing outer space before it is too late.”

At the same time, he clarified the Soviet Union’s stand on research into a space-based missile defense system, making no objection to “research and studies under laboratory conditions.”

“But it is quite another thing when models and prototypes are created and samples of space arms are tested,” he said. “This is always followed by deployment of arms. . . . The U.S.S.R. views as impermissible any out-of-laboratory work connected with the development and testing of models, pilot samples, separate assemblies and components.”

Akhromeyev said that the Soviet approach is practical since out-of-laboratory work can be verified by “national technical means,” a reference to satellite photography.