Western Europe Cautious, Skeptical but Hopeful on Gorbachev Arms Proposal

The United States’ West European allies have reacted cautiously to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s dramatic proposal to rid the world of nuclear weapons by the end of the century.

Interviews with disarmament and foreign affairs specialists in several allied countries indicate a considerable degree of confusion and skepticism about the intent of the Gorbachev plan but that interest in clarifying details of the proposal is strong.

“We welcome his plan and we’ll study it within the alliance, but it can be evaluated only after details are presented in a more definite form by the Soviets in Geneva,” said Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman Gonker Roelants, referring to the latest round of U.S.-Soviet arms talks that began last week.

“Gorbachev wants to convince us he’s a peacemaker, always at the forefront with new proposals, but I think we’re sophisticated enough to see behind his smile,” Roelants added.

Consultations Suggested

West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher labeled the plan “very important” and called for consultations on it among alliance nations. However, he noted that the plan appears to leave ambiguous the security of non-nuclear West European countries.

The West German Foreign Ministry said Monday that Soviet arms negotiator Yuli A. Kvitsinsky and the head of the U.S. Geneva arms control delegation, Max M. Kampelman, will travel to Bonn later this week to discuss the Soviet proposal.

The Gorbachev plan calls for scrapping nuclear missiles in three stages. In the initial phase of five to eight years, the United States and the Soviet Union would cut their strategic arsenals in half and agree to halt all nuclear testing. The two countries would also remove all intermediate-range missiles aimed at or based in Europe.

In the next phase, other nuclear nations, including Britain, France and China, would begin to cut back their level of nuclear weapons over a five-year period.

Finally, starting in 1995, a push for the abolition of atomic weapons would be made.

While arms control specialists on both sides of the Atlantic remain uncertain of exactly what new ground is contained in the Soviet proposals, Gorbachev appears to have softened the Kremlin position in the area of intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

But there are also indications that Moscow has tied this softening, and indeed the whole proposal, to a commitment by the United States that it give up development and testing of its Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars.”

The apparent concession, which calls for eliminating all U.S. and Soviet medium-range nuclear weapons from Europe without demanding immediate compensation in French and British missiles, would be attractive to America’s Atlantic allies.

“The apparent move on European missiles is more than I would have expected,” said Lawrence Freedman, professor of disarmament studies at Kings College of the University of London. “The package is certainly not negative. It conveys a sense that something more than posturing is going on.”

Freedman speculated that Moscow’s offer to scrap its medium-range nuclear missiles facing Europe could mean a shift in Soviet military strategy that in some way diminishes the importance of the SS-20, a triple-warhead missile with a maximum range of 5,000 miles, as the backbone of its intermediate-strike arsenal.

But if the Soviet hope is that the plan will divide the alliance, initial reaction after its presentation shows little signs of doing so.

Similar to U.S. View

In many ways, the response in Europe has been remarkably similar to that in the United States: curiosity about the timing and packaging of the proposal, caution and hope about exactly what to make of it.

“It contains some quite attractive new ideas with some tricky conditions,” a British Foreign Office official said, noting this is a preliminary assessment.

Britain has repeatedly rejected Soviet attempts to open negotiations on reducing its own Polaris nuclear deterrent until Moscow substantially cuts the number of its own missiles. The disparity between Britain’s 192 warheads and Moscow’s 10,000 would make any such exercise absurd, British officials have stated.

But British Foreign Office officials said the new Soviet offer to reduce its warheads by half would “at least raise the prospect of a review,” a chance of talking with Moscow on the subject.

However, France, the other West European nuclear country, has indicated that 50% cuts by the United States and the Soviet Union would still fall short of bringing them to the negotiating table.

“The imbalance between us is so great that a 50% cut makes no sense,” said Stephane Chmelewsky, a spokesman on Soviet affairs in the French Ministry of External Relations. “We aren’t impressed. It is much more a propaganda exercise.”

Expansion Phase

Another serious sticking point for the British and French is that the Gorbachev proposal calls for a freeze of their nuclear deterrents at a time when both countries are expanding their arsenals to a level that would give them a combined total of nearly 1,000 warheads by the late 1990s, compared to the present 352.

Chmelewsky also noted the French official view that Soviet superiority in chemical weapons would have to be redressed before any serious negotiations to ban them began.

The Dutch, who in November decided to deploy U.S. cruise missiles after an agonizing public debate and a series of major protests, must still approve the mechanics of the deployment in their Parliament next month.

Although the Gorbachev plan is likely to be raised in the debate, few believe it will reignite the intense, divisive emotions that gripped the country during much of the last two years.

“The issue has been so exhaustively debated, I don’t see it all coming up again,” Roelants said.