Marathon Talks Resume on Europe Troop Cuts

The Atlantic Alliance and Warsaw Pact powers Thursday resumed their marathon talks on reducing conventional military forces in Central Europe, but with no sign that they will be able to end the current impasse.

Speakers on both sides praised the agreement reached last Sunday in Stockholm on new measures aimed at reducing the risk of accidental war.

But then they blamed each other for the long deadlock in Vienna. These talks began 13 years ago, and there was no indication Thursday that progress is any more likely at this session than at any in the past.

There were signs, in fact, that Moscow and its Warsaw Pact allies will seek to phase out the Vienna talks and take up the subjects under discussion here in some new disarmament conference.

Soviet Ambassador Oleg Grinevsky spoke slightingly of this conference, formally called the Mutual and Balanced Forces Reduction Talks. “It does not make much sense to have two disarmament negotiations going on for Europe at the same time,” he said.

The Declaration of Budapest, issued by the Warsaw Pact in mid-April, suggested that the talks might be expanded to include troop cuts all across Europe, not just in Central Europe, or that an entirely new conference might be held, or that the talks might be included in disarmament negotiations under the 1975 Helsinki agreements on European security.

These proposals are widely interpreted as an attempt to scuttle the meetings. Western diplomats have not decided how to respond.

In the single speech from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization at Thursday’s plenary meeting, West German Ambassador Josef Holik said that he and his Western colleagues are determined “to press for a successful agreement,” and he denounced the East Bloc’s “flat rejection of our proposals with positions that have unfortunately hardened.”

Holik was referring to a NATO proposal made last December for an immediate reduction of 5,000 U.S. troops and 11,500 Soviet troops in Central Europe for a trial period of three years with an inspection system to verify that the agreement is working.