Soviets Seek New Chemical Arms, Pentagon Says

The Pentagon, pressuring Congress for money to buy chemical weapons, disclosed Monday that the Soviet Union is trying to develop poisonous chemicals that can penetrate the masks and cumbersome overgarments used to protect U.S. troops.

“This is a clear escalation by the Soviet Union, and we’re very much concerned about it,” said Thomas J. Welch, the Pentagon’s chemical warfare expert.

Welch’s remarks came a week after the House Appropriations Committee voted to delete all funds for chemical weapons from the fiscal 1986 defense spending bill.

In one more public effort to draw attention to Soviet weapons advances before next month’s summit between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Welch also said that the Soviet Union in the last five years has increased by 16.2% the number of chemical weapons depots in the Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern Europe.

‘Fundamental Problem’

“There is a fundamental problem,” he said at a press conference. “The (U.S.) soldier, the airman, the sailor remain at risk.”

He added that “we continue to receive intelligence that convinces me the Soviets have a continuing effort” to produce new chemical weapons.

Welch’s remarks were accompanied by the release of a Defense Intelligence Agency report warning that the Soviet activities “demonstrate a formidable capability to carry out offensive chemical operations.”

“Soviet research and development activities, usually headed by military chemists, continue to explore new chemical agents and combinations including ways to render the protective masks, suits and filtration systems of potential enemies ineffective,” the report said. The Soviet stockpile, it stated, currently contains agents that cause blistering and choking and that attack the nervous system and the blood stream.

In addition to increasing the storage capacity of its own arsenals, the DIA said, the Soviet Union has stored chemical weapons at nine sites in East Germany, nine in Czechoslovakia, five in Hungary, four in Romania, four in Poland and one in Bulgaria.

The Administration, repeating a request it has promoted unsuccessfully for three years, asked Congress this year for $160 million for chemical weapons funds. It said that the Soviet Union has moved ahead since the United States imposed a unilateral moratorium on chemical weapons production in 1969.

Confirmation of Vote Needed

After rejecting chemical weapons money for the last three years, the House four months ago voted to authorize $124 million for the production of new chemical weapons--a decision that must be confirmed in a final vote likely later this week.

But Congress still must appropriate funds and the House Appropriations Committee voted 26-24 last week to delete a subcommittee recommendation to provide the Administration’s full $160 million.

The full House could reverse that decision later this week, when it is also expected to take up the defense spending bill.

The Administration proposes to build so-called binary weapons--those that use two chemical agents that would lack a lethal punch until combined in an artillery shell or bomb on its way to a target. Officials argue that this would reduce the hazards of storing and transporting the existing generation of chemical weapons, which are highly toxic in their current state.