Europe Arms Accord Seen as Most Promising

A senior Soviet official said Friday that medium-range arms in Europe seemed the most promising area in which the superpowers could reach an agreement, possibly at a summit later this year.

Deputy Foreign Ministry spokesman Boris D. Pyadyshev said Moscow’s conditions for a meeting between President Reagan and Kremlin leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev continued to rest on a good political climate and the prospects that they could sign at least one arms control accord.

“In some areas we now see outlines which could allow progress,” he told reporters. “The question of INF (Intermediate Nuclear Forces) is especially promising and here we see possibilities of reaching agreement.”

West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in New York for the U.N. General Assembly, was asked by an interviewer in Bonn if he could confirm reports that a ceiling of 100 nuclear systems for each superpower was being proposed.

“Not systems but warheads,” Genscher said. “That is the number which is under discussion at the moment.”

Current Strength

The United States has 108 Pershing 2 and 128 cruise missiles deployed in West Germany, Italy, Britain and Belgium, all single-warhead. The Soviet Union, according to Western figures, currently has 270 triple-warhead SS-20 missiles within range of Western Europe.

Both Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze said after their meeting in Washington last weekend that the superpowers were nearing an arms accord.

Shevardnadze confirmed that the Kremlin dropped its insistence that France and Britain agree to refrain from modernizing their nuclear forces as part of a U.S.-Soviet INF agreement.

U.S. officials in Washington said an interim accord could be reached under which a certain number of SS-20, Pershing 2 and cruise missiles would remain in Europe.

Pyadyshev said the Soviet Union would prefer to “fully liquidate” U.S. and Soviet medium-range missiles in Europe.

Interim Solution Proposed

But because Washington was unwilling to take this step, the Kremlin proposed to Reagan an interim solution, he said.

He did not make clear when this offer had been made but said, “There is a possibility of bringing the two sides nearer on this. The Soviet Union will play its part. We will go our half of the way. The rest is up to the Americans.”

He said that under any agreement removing U.S. and Soviet medium-range missiles from Europe, France and Britain would keep their arsenals at existing levels.

In Asia, Moscow envisaged a freeze of such arms.

“We are ready not to increase the number of medium-range missiles in the East of our country on the understanding that U.S. nuclear means are not additionally deployed in the Asian region that are capable of reaching Soviet territory,” he said.

U.S. negotiators expressed concern that the Soviet Union’s highly mobile medium-range missiles could simply be transferred to Asia if they were removed from Europe.