Democrats Offer to Deal on Arms Control

Saying they did not want to hamper President Reagan’s ability to deal with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, House Democrats today offered to compromise on arms control restrictions they added to a Pentagon budget bill.

“I believe we will be able to find a way to compromise,” House Majority Leader Jim Wright (D-Tex.) said. “We do not want to make his task more difficult, we want to make it easier.”

He said Democrats are talking with Senate Republicans in an effort to “postpone any confrontation” over five major restrictions added by the Democratic-run House to a stopgap budget bill.

Wright’s words were echoed by Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), one of the leaders of a group of Democrats who won House approval for the restrictions.

Don’t Want Blame

“We’re looking for some way to compromise,” she said. “We don’t want to do anything which would get us blamed for anything that happens in Iceland.”

The restrictions essentially would freeze spending for “Star Wars” anti-missile research; ban production of chemical weapons; halt, for one year starting Jan. 1, U.S. nuclear tests as long as the Soviets continue their test moratorium; continue a ban on anti-satellite tests as long as the Soviets maintain their ASAT test ban, and require continued U.S. adherence to the unratified SALT II nuclear arms treaty, if the Soviets do likewise.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) criticized the House restrictions in a speech on the Senate floor today. He said Congress should get “behind our President. He needs our support and he deserves it.”

He said the House restrictions “would give the Soviets by default much of what they hope to accomplish in Iceland.”

Reagan, in his radio speech Saturday, said the restrictions would hurt his bargaining power in talks with Gorbachev. “The Soviets must not think that delay could work to their advantage by gaining from Congress what they cannot win at the negotiating table,” he said.

The restrictions were attached to a budget bill needed to pay for the Pentagon and most other federal agencies for the current fiscal year. The Republican-controlled Senate did not add the House restrictions, and those and other differences will be reconciled this week by a House-Senate conference committee.