Despite Summit Collapse, Compromise on ABM Treaty, ‘Star Wars’ Seems Possible

As U.S. and Soviet negotiators seek to pick up the pieces on arms control in Geneva, both sides profess to see potential for compromise on the issue that led to failure in Iceland.

The confrontation at Reykjavik between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev ended in stalemate over their conflicting attitudes toward the 14-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and its impact on “Star Wars,” Reagan’s proposed space-based missile defense system.

And as new details of just what happened at the Iceland summit have emerged, it has become clear that on paper at least, the disagreements separating Washington and Moscow might be within the realm of compromise. The two sides, for example, are hung up over the difference between what the United States calls a “component” of a missile defense network and what the Soviets call “space elements of anti-ballistic defense.”

Issue of Technical Terms

But the prospects for dramatic progress on arms control hinge less on arguments over minute technical terms than they do on whether the two superpowers are prepared to alter their underlying positions on how rapidly either nation should move toward development of an anti-missile defense system.

While the ABM treaty has become the focal point of the U.S.-Soviet struggle over “Star Wars,” the system Reagan envisions goes far beyond anything that existed when the treaty was drafted.

The ABM treaty was written in 1972 to ban all but a token missile defense force in fixed land installations. Further, it permits only the tests of subcomponents--or small bits of a weapon system--in space, a restriction that the Administration insists it has met. The present controversy centers on how much work should be allowed on exotic new weapon concepts--directed-energy beams such as lasers, for example--that would be based in space.

The Soviets want greater restrictions than exist in the ABM treaty now. Specifically, Moscow appears to want all work, including “research and testing,” confined to laboratories on Earth. No tests could be conducted in space.

Fatal to ‘Star Wars’

The Administration contends that such restrictions would effectively kill “Star Wars,” known formally as the Strategic Defense Initiative. It contends that the ABM Treaty can be “broadly interpreted” to permit “research, development and testing” of the high-technology beam concepts that were unknown when the treaty was written.

Both the U.S. and Soviet positions were criticized this week by John B. Rhinelander, legal counsel to the U.S. delegation that negotiated the treaty. During a briefing at the Arms Control Assn., Rhinelander and other former diplomats who also helped forge the treaty said there should be “no changes either way.”

At Reykjavik, Reagan and Gorbachev appeared ready to agree that neither side would withdraw from the treaty for 10 years. The treaty is technically for “unlimited duration” but provides that each side could withdraw after six months’ notice if its “supreme interests” are jeopardized.

In effect, the 10-year extension would have overridden the six-month withdrawal provision.

Free for Deployment

But additionally, the United States proposed that after 10 years, either side would be free to begin deploying a missile defense system. The Soviet position was that the treaty, of “unlimited duration,” would continue to bind the parties.

Adding yet more complexity to the situation are the contradictory views now emerging from the two capitals on what the final offensive arms reduction positions were. Both sides seemed to agree that long-range strategic weapons would be eliminated if Reagan had accepted the Soviet position on the ABM treaty, but whether it was all or just some of these weapons is “unknown and probably unknowable,” as one U.S. official admitted Thursday.

In Moscow, Gorbachev said his final offer was that “the strategic weapons of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. will be totally eliminated” within 10 years. This would wipe out all ballistic missiles, bombers and cruise missiles with ranges greater than 5,500 miles.

Excluding Cruise Missiles

Washington officially maintains that the President proposed, and the Soviets tentatively accepted, elimination of only ballistic missiles--that is, excluding bombers and cruise missiles.

Within the U.S. government, however, there is some doubt that the Soviets accepted the American offer. As reconstructed by State Department officials here this week, the following give-and-take chronology occurred:

Gorbachev: No withdrawal from the ABM agreement for 10 years, not 15 years, as previously proposed.

Reagan: OK, but eliminate all ballistic missiles in 10 years as well.

Gorbachev: Eliminate all strategic weapons systems in 10 years, plus 10-year non-withdrawal from the ABM treaty and only laboratory work on space defenses during the 10 years.

Collapse of Summit

At this point, the summit collapsed. The laboratory-only limitation was sprung on Reagan only at the end, although throughout the two-day meeting--and earlier in Geneva--U.S. officials said, the Soviets had insisted that “strict compliance” with the ABM treaty would be required. The implication was that they meant compliance “stricter” than the treaty itself.

In any case, only in the final session with Reagan did Gorbachev define “strict compliance” as laboratory-only work, U.S. officials said. Gorbachev later said there could be research, development and testing, but only within the laboratory.

This Soviet demand for restricting work to the laboratory is “basically unverifiable” and therefore unacceptable, Rhinelander said. And the Administration’s “broad interpretation” of the treaty was not justified by either the treaty itself or by the negotiating record, he added.