ASAT Test Ban, Chemical Arms Delay Approved

The Democratic-controlled House, continuing to chip away at key elements of President Reagan’s military buildup, voted Wednesday to renew a ban on the testing of anti-satellite weapons, known as ASAT, and to delay production of new chemical weapons.

The vote to extend the moratorium on testing of anti-satellite weapons, which was imposed last December and is scheduled to expire on Oct. 1, was 222 to 197. The count on the proposal to add another year to the 17-year prohibition on the production of chemical weapons was 210 to 209.

The action followed House votes earlier this week to put other crimps in Reagan’s arms plans. The House voted to force Reagan to abide by the terms of the unratified 1979 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, to slash his spending request for developing his space-based “Star Wars” missile defense system and to put a moratorium on U.S. nuclear weapons tests if the Soviets would accept on-site U.S. verification of their own moratorium.

‘Regarded Very Seriously’

White House spokesman Larry Speakes said that the initiatives, which the House attached to the fiscal 1987 defense authorization bill, would undermine efforts to negotiate new arms control agreements with the Soviet Union.

“Any limitation by the legislative branch . . . on the executive branch in the conduct of foreign policy would be regarded very seriously here and it would be something the President would consider vetoing,” Speakes said, referring specifically to the arms treaty provision.

Speakes also called the House vote to cut Reagan’s $5.3-billion “Star Wars” request to $3.1 billion “the wrong action taken at the wrong time.” He said that arms control talks are at “a very serious stage” and could be impeded if the Administration loses its flexibility to produce and test new weapons.

House sponsors hoped to finish wrestling with a sheaf of proposed amendments and complete action today on the defense bill. For fiscal 1987, which begins Oct. 1, the bill would authorize a total of $286 billion in defense spending, about the same amount as approved for this year.

The Republican-controlled Senate last week passed a $295-billion version of the legislation that does not include any of the House’s controversial arms-limiting proposals. Reagan had sought $320 billion in military spending.

Negotiators for the two chambers will meet next month to reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill.

Links Ban to Soviets

The House-passed anti-satellite measure, which would extend a ban on the testing of the experimental weapons as long as the Soviets continued a self-imposed four-year-old moratorium, was sponsored by Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-Riverside). The 222-197 vote was largely along party lines, with only 28 Republicans breaking ranks to vote for the ban.

Unlike Reagan’s proposed high-tech “Star Wars” weapons, which would be based in space and poised to kill nuclear weapons fired from Earth, his anti-satellite weapons would use F-15 fighter aircraft to shoot projectiles into space at Soviet communications and spy satellites. The goal would be to deny the Soviet military the vital targeting and communications data these satellites could provide if a war broke out.

Opponents of Brown’s proposal argued that the Soviets could afford to unilaterally declare an anti-satellite test ban because their system already has been developed and tested several times. “They have their system in place and we’re locking ourselves out,” warned Rep. William L. Dickinson (R-Ala.).

But Brown and other critics noted that the Soviets had not successfully tested their system since 1982. The system failed its last six tests before that, they said, and is designed only to reach U.S. satellites flying in low orbit.

‘Stone-Age Clunker’

Dismissing the Soviet system as a “stone-age clunker,” Rep. Les AuCoin (D-Ore.) claimed that development of American ASAT weapons would only force the Soviets to improve their system. “Because we’re not testing and they’re not testing, America’s most vital communications satellites are not in jeopardy,” he argued.

Illinois Republican John Edward Porter sponsored the proposal to block the Administration’s attempt to resume production of nerve gas weapons until at least Oct. 1, 1987. Although no lethal chemical weapons have been made in this country for 17 years, the Pentagon has been readying plans to begin making them again.

The proposal would affect production of two chemical weapons delivery systems--a 155-mm. artillery shell and a bomb known as the Big Eye. Both would be loaded with binary nerve gas that would become deadly only when two otherwise harmless chemicals are combined after launching.

The Administration and its supporters argue that the new weapons are needed to counter Soviet chemical weapons development. They claim that binary weapons are much safer to handle than current stockpiles of nerve gas weapons, which average 27 years in age and contain a single chemical that is lethal at all times.

Cite GAO Report

“It’s vital to keep these weapons in the theater (of potential war) so we don’t come up too little, too late,” said Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio.) “We need it for deterrent.”

But critics of gas production noted that a recently released study by the congressional General Accounting Office of the Big Eye dismissed the weapon as ineffective. “So far the Big Eye has bombed,” Porter said.

Porter’s amendment would also bar the Administration from removing present chemical weapons stockpiles from most North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries in Europe unless they are replaced by an effective, binary chemical weapon.