NATO Toxic Arms Move Denounced by Soviet Defense Aide

Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, the first deputy defense minister, said Friday that NATO’s approval of U.S. plans to resume chemical weapons production deals “a heavy blow” to efforts to limit such arms.

Akhromeyev said at a news conference on arms control that the United States does not need new chemical weapons because it already stores “thousands of tons” of such weapons in West Germany. The Reagan Administration maintains that U.S. stockpiles have become obsolete.

Defense ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Thursday approved the U.S. plans, in response to stipulations by Congress. The United States stopped making the weapons in 1969.

Akhromeyev said the NATO decision “is a heavy blow for people in that it makes it more difficult to resolve the problem of limiting chemical weapons.”

Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said at a news conference in Copenhagen on Friday that resuming production was made necessary by the Soviet Union’s own chemical weapon stockpiles and capabilities.