Tower Offers Arms Talks Resignation

Former Sen. John Tower has submitted his resignation from the U.S. negotiating team at the Geneva arms talks with the Soviet Union, Administration officials said Monday.

One official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named, said that Tower had sent a letter of resignation to President Reagan, citing “personal reasons.” However, the official said: “Whether the President will accept it, I don’t know.”

Tower’s departure as one of three members of the U.S. team could signal trouble in the talks, at least in the segment devoted to long-range nuclear missiles and bombers, for which he is the primary negotiator. Little or no progress has been reported in this category.

An aide to a Republican senator said that Tower is convinced that the Soviets will wait until Reagan leaves office before making any major concessions on arms control. Tower “believes that the Soviets are really stonewalling it and are going to wait Reagan out . . . . They’re just not making any progress,” the aide said.

The most recent round of the Geneva negotiations ended last week with no indication that the two sides had made firm progress. It remained unclear whether Tower would attend the next session, which is scheduled to begin in May.

Tower, who reportedly is in Europe for discussions with Allied leaders, could not be reached for comment. But later this week he is expected to explain his decision to depart.

Possible Successor

An official at the White House said that Ronald F. Lehman, a former aide to Tower, is at the top of the list of candidates to succeed him.

Lehman, 39, was Tower’s deputy in Geneva until recently becoming deputy assistant to the President for national security affairs. Previously, he had worked on the staff of the Senate Arms Services Committee, which Tower once headed, and had been a deputy to Assistant Defense Secretary Richard N. Perle, the Pentagon’s arms control expert.

One Administration official said that the departure apparently had “nothing to do with Administration policy.”

And another said that Tower had “served through several rounds” of negotiations in Geneva and is ready to do something else. In addition, a source who requested anonymity said that Tower’s wife is unhappy in Geneva and wants to return to the United States.

‘In the Works for Weeks’

Although White House and State Department officials had no official comment on Tower’s resignation, one official said that the departure “is not something that just came up. It’s been in the works for weeks.”

Before he joined the arms control negotiating team, the 60-year-old Republican from Texas had earned a reputation as a staunch conservative and supporter of the Administration’s defense budget. In Geneva, he oversaw talks involving strategic weapons, serving under chief U.S. negotiator Max M. Kampelman, whose purview included space-based defense systems. The third member of the team, Maynard W. Glitman, a veteran Foreign Service officer, dealt with intermediate-range missiles.

Staff writers Norman Kempster, Sara Fritz, James Gerstenzang and Eleanor Clift contributed to this story.