Europe Security Talks Inch Closer to Final Agreement

Inching progress toward a final agreement marked a long day of negotiations Saturday at the 35-nation conference here on security and confidence-building measures in Europe, with the outcome still another 24 hours away.

After 33 months of haggling in Stockholm, the final stages of the negotiations are turning out to be more protracted, intricate and difficult than many leading Western delegates had expected, with each side defending hard-line positions, some of which have been held for many months.

By late Saturday evening, the two sides had agreed on general language to describe limits on minimum “restricted areas” that would be out of bounds for foreign military observers watching military maneuvers or flying aerial inspection tours.

This issue was of importance to the Western side because the Soviet Union declares large areas of its territory to be out of bounds to foreigners, and if this were then applied to the staging of military maneuvers, it would mean that activities in huge tracts of the Soviet Union could be taking place without observation and would, in effect, negate the whole idea of “confidence-building” military measures.

Other inching progress was also reported by the negotiators who are trying to draw up detailed operational procedures for aerial inspection flights over Warsaw Pact or North Atlantic Treaty Organization territory.

The major sticking point that still remains appears to be the “threshold level” of the number of troops involved in a military exercise that would automatically open it to outside military observers. The Soviets are still standing firm on a threshold of 14,000 men, while the NATO powers insist on a threshold of 10,500.

While the difference of 3,500 is relatively slight, it can mean the difference between permitting observation of divisional maneuvers or doing so only in cases of maneuvers involving larger units.

The expectation Saturday night was that the negotiations will perhaps wind up tonight, with final speeches and a final plenary session to approve all that has been done taking place on Monday.