U.S. Calling for Openness in Space Defense Research

The new U.S. arms control plan, formally laid before Soviet negotiators in Geneva on Friday, contains two provisions dealing with the Reagan Administration’s controversial “Star Wars” anti-missile initiative, including a proposal that both sides practice greater openness in their space defense research efforts, U.S. officials said.

The other “Star Wars” provision calls for intensified U.S.-Soviet discussions on how the two superpowers could cooperate in introducing anti-missile defenses on both sides if such weapons should prove feasible in the future, the officials said.

And in a related development intended in part to help build momentum on arms control, President Reagan will propose to the Soviets that a second summit be scheduled for next year, sources said Friday. The aim is to hold annual sessions between leaders of the superpowers as a standard feature of U.S.-Soviet relations.

The proposal for regular summits is being relayed to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev by Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who will arrive in Moscow Monday for two days of pre-summit talks with Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

Administration officials are concerned that with less than three weeks remaining before the Nov. 19-20 summit in Geneva, the chances of working out concrete agreements on arms control are not very good. If they can get the Soviets to agree to a second summit session sometime next year, Administration officials say, they can maintain momentum on arms control that might otherwise be lost.

“We have continuing differences, that’s no secret,” said White House spokesman Larry Speakes. “And if we can work out a procedure to deal with them, that’s what we would like. We have no expectation or pretense of solving problems in two days.”

Speakes said the Administration has been searching for some time for “a framework for dealing with problems.” He envisioned “an agenda for the future” that would include regular dialogue at both the ministerial level and “leader-to-leader.”

In the arms control maneuvering leading up to Geneva, Moscow has continued to insist that no agreement on offensive weapons is possible without curtailment of “Star Wars,” the popular name for the Administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative.

Offensive Weapons Proposal

But the call for greater openness on research and the proposal to discuss possible future deployment of space-based anti-missile systems were the only two aspects of the space weapons controversy dealt with in the Administration’s new proposal.

The bulk of the proposal was devoted to offensive nuclear weapons and centered on two principle features:

--A 50% cut in warheads mounted on long-range missiles and carried aboard bombers, reducing the total to 6,000 on each side. A maximum of 3,000 warheads could be deployed on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, with the remainder divided equally between submarine-based ballistic missiles and bomber-carried cruise missiles and bombs.

--A freeze on deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe at 140, which is the number of U.S. Pershing 2 and cruise missiles scheduled to be deployed by the end of 1985. The Soviets would have to reduce their 243 SS-20 missiles now based in the European part of the Soviet Union by about 100, as well as cut back on the roughly 200 SS-20s now positioned beyond the Ural Mountains in Asia.

Thus the new U.S. proposal appears to be only a token nod toward Soviet demands on space defense, plus a repackaging of earlier U.S. proposals on offensive systems designed to seize on what the Administration sees as the best features of a recent Soviet proposal.

Soviet Laser Device

The Administration’s new call for greater openness on research involving space defense concepts, one official said, partly reflects U.S. claims that the Soviets have been intensively engaged for a decade in such work. According to Pentagon publications, the Soviets have built a fixed laser device that can hit objects in orbit.

In calling for regular meetings with his Soviet counterpart, Reagan has drastically shifted his attitude on summits. Long an outspoken skeptic on the value of such encounters, Reagan declared as recently as last January: “To have a meeting, just to have a meeting, doesn’t make any sense. That builds up people’s hopes, and some previous Presidents have done that and found that the letdown was very terrible.”

The shift appears to stem from Gorbachev’s rise to power early this year. Until the new and vigorous Soviet leader took office in March, Reagan regularly attached strict conditions to summit meetings, insisting that they be “well-prepared,” that they carry a reasonable prospect of success and that the Soviets alter their behavior internationally.

At one point, the Administration was insisting that the Soviets remove their troops from Afghanistan as a condition to a summit meeting.

All that changed with the ascendancy of Gorbachev. As Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, put it: “The White House got a little bit stunned by Gorbachev. For the first time, they had an aggressive, self-promoting leader, just like Reagan in a way, and he was stealing some of the thunder. Suddenly, the public relations shoe is on the other foot.”

Summit Criteria Dropped

Reagan’s summit criteria were dropped one by one, putting him in somewhat the same position as some of those past presidents he spoke of. And, as a hedge against possible post-summit letdown, Administration officials would like to get an agreement to meet again. Compared to all the controversial issues on the agenda, a regular schedule of summits should be relatively easy to accomplish.

It would also provide something positive for each side to point to in the domestic opinion war at home. Regular meetings between the superpowers are something almost everyone applauds. In the words of Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a former counselor to the State Department who was involved in planning President Richard M. Nixon’s summits, “I think it’s a good idea to have them because it’s a bad idea not to have them.”