Soviets Amenable on ‘Star Wars,’ U.S. Aide Says

Soviet officials, in private, do not consider President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, a space-based anti-missile defense, to be “as big a stumbling block as they say” it is to an arms control agreement, a senior Administration official said Monday.

The official, who asked not to be identified, participated in last week’s Geneva summit between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. He said the Soviet Union might agree to an arms reduction pact that permitted the United States to continue research on a space-based defense system .

At the same time, the official said, the United States might be willing to accept some restrictions on its SDI program--commonly known as “Star Wars”--if it could agree with the Soviets on a definition of what constitutes research under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The Soviets have insisted that research violates the ABM treaty, but the United States maintains that it is permitted.

The only components of the program that Reagan insists are not negotiable, the official told reporters during a luncheon interview, are research and testing to determine whether a space-based missile defense system is feasible. A definition of “research” and the timing of any potential deployment are negotiable, as is the general issue of missile defense systems.

Warning on ‘Star Wars’

Gorbachev told Reagan at the summit that no progress in arms negotiations could take place unless the United States abandoned the space-based defense program, which he said would allow the United States to launch a first strike without fear of retaliation. He warned that the Soviets would accelerate their buildup of offensive nuclear missiles if work on “Star Wars” continues.

In Moscow, the Communist Party Politburo, in its first post-summit session, reiterated Gorbachev’s opposition to the space defense system, calling it the core problem in disarmament efforts.

Despite Gorbachev’s adamant stance, U.S. officials say privately they believe that the two superpowers could reach an agreement in principle that research on such a system could continue while the negotiators in the arms talks in Geneva hammer out an agreement.

The official who met with reporters Monday said that SDI “is not the make-or-break issue” the Soviets have made it out to be in their public comments. He questioned whether the Soviets actually believe their own public declarations that research on missile defense systems would upset the miliary balance between the superpowers and accelerate the arms race.

“They don’t reject the defense psychology as completely as they say they do,” the official said.

He suggested the Soviets will eventually back down on “Star Wars” just as they did on their insistence that they would not engage in arms negotiations if the United States deployed Pershing 2 and cruise missiles in Western Europe in 1983. Although the Soviets walked out of arms negotiations after the United States began deploying the missiles, they agreed to resume the talks last January.