Soviets Press U.S. to Accept Weapons Offer

Top Kremlin military and foreign policy officials prodded the United States on Saturday to accept Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s new plan to ban all nuclear weapons by the year 2000 but indicated that U.S. reaction to the proposal would not affect plans for a superpower summit this year.

They said, however, that the Soviet Union intends to keep its intermediate-range SS-20 missiles deployed east of the Ural Mountains in the first stage of the plan, even if there is an agreement to ban them from the European part of the Soviet Union and from Eastern Europe.

Furthermore, the three officials told a news conference that a halt to work on President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, the space-based missile defense program widely known as “Star Wars,” is essential to pave the way for reductions in existing nuclear missiles.

No ‘Hypothetical Questions’

One of the officials, First Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy M. Kornienko, evaded a direct reply when asked if the Reagan Administration’s unwillingness to scrap its “Star Wars” program would imperil the 1986 summit.

“Let’s be constructive and let’s not ask hypothetical questions,” Kornienko told a reporter.

Western diplomats said the three officials clarified some points of Gorbachev’s proposal but revealed nothing unexpected in their two-hour briefing.

Leonid M. Zamyatin, director of the International Information Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, said that no date has yet been set for the 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev meeting. But he denied that the Soviet Union has asked for a delay in the talks, which Reagan had proposed be held in June in the United States.

Kornienko, Zamyatin and Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, chief of staff of the Soviet armed forces, appeared at a joint news conference to elaborate on Gorbachev’s proposal last Wednesday. Akhromeyev insisted that the Soviet Union, traditionally reluctant to allow foreigners to check on its military preparations, is in favor of verification in every area of disarmament.

“Verification should not be turned into an intelligence operation,” the marshal said, “but should be consistent with the task.”

Akhromeyev, however, made clear that the Soviet SS-20 missiles east of the Urals will be retained temporarily to offset U.S. nuclear bombers at forward bases and on U.S. Navy aircraft carriers in the western Pacific. Eventually, the plan envisions their destruction as well.

The intermediate-range missiles aimed at Europe, he said, would be destroyed if the United States agreed to take all of its missiles out of Western and Central Europe and halt future deployment in that region.

How to Count

During the proposed first stage of the Gorbachev plan, until 1995, British and French nuclear forces would not be involved in the negotiations, the Soviet officials said.

In the past, Moscow has said that its SS-20s could not be removed or reduced unless Britain and France cut back on their relatively small nuclear arsenals.

Gorbachev proposed separate arms control talks with France and Britain last October, but both countries rejected his overture, saying that the superpowers would have to agree on weapons reductions first.

Despite some criticism of what they see as U.S. coolness toward the new Gorbachev proposal, the Kremlin leaders seemed to avoid any suggestion that if Washington fails to go along, this year’s will be jeopardized.

Wouldn’t Speculate

“The greater the degree of agreement that is reached on our proposals, then the more successful will be the (summit) meeting,” Kornienko said.

But he refused to speculate on Moscow’s reaction if Reagan continues to stick to his “Star Wars” research program.

Picking up a glass of water from the table, he said:

“Let’s look at the glass and call it half-full and not half-empty,” he said. “Let’s be optimistic.”

Zamyatin said the Kremlin does not view the American reaction to Gorbachev’s plan as “totally negative” and said the arguments used by Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger against a nuclear test moratorium are “not true.” A second Reagan-Gorbachev summit, he said, could not be a repeat of their first meeting at Geneva in November, when no arms control agreements were reached.

Responses Required

“It is required that the U.S. side not only study carefully the (new) Soviet program but provide responses to the program we are offering,” Zamyatin said.

Kornienko seemed to reject any practical space-weapons research in one of his answers.

If laser research became “goal-oriented or directed research to design a weapon,” this would be proscribed under the Gorbachev plan, he said.

Asked why the Soviet Union had extended its nuclear test moratorium for three months, Kornienko said it would give the United States another chance to agree to join in the ban.

As for the duration of the extension, he quipped, “We have a saying: God Almighty likes the number 3.”