Reagan Pleased by Soviet Arms Cut Proposal

An optimistic President Reagan on Saturday commended a Soviet proposal that U.S. and Soviet nuclear arms be cut by 50%, while Senate sources said Reagan’s own proposal for such a cut would ban deployment of mobile long-range missiles, including the U.S. Midgetman.

With Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Robert C. McFarlane, the president’s national security adviser, on their way by Air Force jet to a crucial pre-summit meeting in Moscow, Reagan said he was “encouraged because after a long wait, legitimate negotiations are under way” to reduce nuclear weapons.

But he said any reductions agreed upon by the United States and the Soviet Union must give equal treatment to all comparable weapons--particularly those considered most threatening to world stability.

Ban on Mobile Missiles

According to Senate sources, Reagan’s response to the Soviet offer included a proposal that both superpowers outlaw mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles, which are considered particularly troublesome in terms of arms control because their mobility makes difficult the verification of their numbers.

Under this proposal, the United States would abandon development of the small strategic missile dubbed Midgetman, which is still several years from possible deployment, and the Soviet Union would give up its SS-24 and SS-25 missiles. The SS-24, capable of carrying 10 warheads, is in development, but deployment of the single-warhead SS-25 has begun, U.S. officials have said.

The proposal is part of a package that U.S. negotiators will review with their Soviet counterparts in the Geneva arms control talks. The latest session was extended into this week--one week beyond its scheduled close--to consider Reagan’s response to the Soviet proposal for a 50% nuclear arms reduction. The President’s counterproposal means that each side now has its own version of a 50% reduction on the negotiating table.

Reagan’s remarks, made in his weekly radio speech, and the quick trip to Moscow that Shultz and McFarlane are undertaking, underscored the flurry of diplomatic attention and public emphasis on summitry in the weeks leading up to Reagan’s scheduled meeting with Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, in Geneva on Nov. 19 and 20.

In Moscow, Henry A. Trofimenko, a Kremlin foreign policy adviser, wrote that there is too little time before the summit for negotiators to reach agreement on a full-scale disarmament package and that the two leaders should reach agreement on general arms control principles and regional disputes--the latter an area that Reagan has also singled out as a target for progress.

Trofimenko, head of the foreign policy department of the U.S.A.-Canada Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, made his remarks in an article printed in early Sunday editions of the English-language weekly Moscow News.

Reagan, speaking from Camp David, Md., where he is spending the weekend, said that in accepting “the 50% reduction proposed by the Soviets . . . reductions must be applied to systems which are comparable--and especially to those which would give either side a destabilizing first-strike advantage.”

The U.S. proposal is aimed primarily at limiting the Soviets’ huge array of accurate, strategic missiles that could strike the United States about 30 minutes after launch. According to the Pentagon, the Soviets have roughly a 3-1 warhead advantage in these missiles.

Inclusion of the Midgetman is likely to stir up controversy in Congress. Its supporters regard it as a smaller, less vulnerable alternative to the 10-warhead MX missile. The smaller weapon was advanced by the President’s Commission on Strategic Forces, headed by retired Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, as part of an overall strategic modernization program that also involved a general reduction of nuclear arms and deployment of 100 MX missiles.

$50-Billion Price Tag

A recent report by the General Accounting Office, the congressional investigative agency, predicted that deploying 500 Midgetmen missiles could cost as much as $50 billion.

Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), one of the leaders of congressional opposition to the smaller missile, praised the new U.S. proposal.

He said that as the numbers of more accurate, silo-based long-range missiles are reduced--as they would be if the Geneva arms talks bear fruit--a greater strategic role would be assigned to the smaller, less accurate Midgetman. But, arguing for a total ban on mobile missiles, he said that if the number of such missiles is merely limited, verification of compliance would be difficult, thus increasing the instability that the mobile missiles could pose to superpower relations.

Shultz, en route to the critical talks, stopped in Helsinki, Finland, on Saturday night. On the plane earlier, he told reporters that public Soviet statements suggest that the Kremlin may be willing to move toward a separate agreement limiting intermediate-range missiles in Europe, ahead of progress on the long-range, strategic missiles and on space weapons. The three weapons systems are now the subject of concurrent but separate talks.

“It does appear that the Soviet Union is willing to consider an INF (Intermediate-range Nuclear Force) agreement standing on its own feet unrelated to what happens in other areas, and we’re quite prepared for that,” he said.

Shultz to Meet Gorbachev

Shultz indicated that this issue would be raised Monday and Tuesday in Moscow when he meets with Gorbachev, although large differences separate the two nations regarding medium-range weapons.

Shultz also told reporters accompanying him that he is carrying a personal message from Reagan to Gorbachev. He refused to discuss its contents.

He said he and Reagan hope that the Moscow and Geneva meetings will give new “political impulse” to U.S.-Soviet arms negotiations.

The Moscow talks will seek to discover areas of understanding that can be reflected in statements from the Reagan-Gorbachev summit, Shultz said.

“We have no problem in principle with an overall communique if there is real content to it,” he said. “But that’s the question: How much content can we agree on?”

Shultz’s optimistic note on the medium-range weapons stems from a comment Gorbachev made in Paris last month, as well as an element of the recent Soviet arms proposal.

The Soviets called for a freeze in deployments of U.S. Pershing 2 missiles and ground-launched cruise missiles, followed by reductions that would eliminate all the Pershings and most of the slower-flying cruise missiles.

The new U.S. offer would accept a freeze on both sides’ forces in Europe as of the end of the year, when the United States will have 108 Pershings and 120 cruise missiles in place. Each U.S. weapon carries one warhead, for a total of 228.

By contrast, the Soviets have at least 243 SS-20 missiles, each with three warheads, deployed in Europe.

Robert C. Toth reported from Helsinki, Finland.