NATO Insists on Balanced Nuclear, Conventional Cuts

European defense officials served notice Tuesday that they would balk at substantial reductions in nuclear armaments, including the U.S. intermediate-range weapons deployed in Europe, unless such cuts are accompanied by agreements balancing Western and Soviet Bloc conventional forces.

Meeting for the first time since the superpower summit in Iceland, which foundered on the Soviet Union’s insistence that cuts in offensive weapons be linked to limits on the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative, members of NATO demonstrated “extremely solid and unbroken support” for President Reagan’s refusal to accept the Soviet proposal, according to British Defense Minister George Younger.

But, Younger said, “we would be extremely concerned at a final agreement to abolish ballistic missiles if there was not an appropriate, effective reduction in conventional and chemical weapons, and so on.”

His statements, made to reporters after the first day of a two-day meeting of the defense ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, echoed points that other officials said he made in the private conference.

At their summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev discussed a 50% cut in ballistic missiles, the elimination of intermediate-range weapons from Western Europe and the European part of the Soviet Union and a reduction of such missiles elsewhere to 100 each for both the United States and the Soviet Union.

Younger, host to the alliance’s Nuclear Planning Group, reflected the European concern that removal of the so-called U.S. “nuclear umbrella” would leave the Western European nations in a difficult position--forced either to increase spending on conventional defenses, which they have been reluctant to do, or to do without a deterrent to what are considered the superior non-nuclear forces of the Soviet Union and its allies.

A senior West German official said Younger told the meeting that the allies should not allow the impression to grow that the defense of Europe was possible without nuclear weapons. “The transition to a world without nuclear weapons will be protracted, difficult and dangerous,” he was quoted as saying.

Younger’s presentation did not appear to reflect disagreement with the United States. Indeed, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger told American reporters that he “heard no criticism whatever of the President.”

Nevertheless, it amounted to a reminder that European concerns must be taken into account in the superpowers’ efforts to reduce their arsenals of long-range nuclear weapons and the medium-range weapons they have aimed at each other’s allies in Europe.

Seconding Younger’s view, Lothar Ruhle, the West German state secretary for defense, is said to have voiced concern about the “massive military threat” posed by the Soviet Union’s conventional forces.

Constant Examination

Weinberger acknowledged such concerns, telling reporters that “the conventional balance, of course, has to be examined and re-examined” as changes are made in the deployment of nuclear weapons.

Meeting at an Edwardian hotel surrounded by golf courses on the Scottish moorlands about 50 miles northeast of Glasgow, with the snow-dusted peaks of the Trossach Mountains in the distance, the defense officials also reached agreement on revised guidelines for the use of nuclear weapons.

Weinberger declined to discuss these. But they were said to have been redrawn, for the first time since 1969, to take account of changes in weapons’ capabilities rather than to reflect a shift in policy.

Younger, summarizing the first day’s proceedings, criticized the Soviet Union for pushing ahead at the Iceland talks on Oct. 11-12 with proposals for cuts in the strategic--or long-range--weapons and medium-range nuclear weapons while apparently intending all along to introduce in the meeting’s closing moments its demands to limit to the laboratory work on the Strategic Defense Initiative--the space-based missile defense system known as “Star Wars.”

SDI as a Stopper

“It is the view of my NATO allies, including, I suggest, the United States, that the Soviet Union pressed many of these matters far beyond what is sensible, in view of the fact that they intended to put SDI in as a stopper at the last minute,” Younger said at a news conference.

Weinberger, who was traveling in Asia when Reagan and Gorbachev met in Iceland, has received briefings on the summit conference. One of his key deputies, Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard N. Perle, took part in the Reykjavik meetings and joined Weinberger in Europe.

The Pentagon chief said he assumes that it was made clear to the Soviet Union that any agreement on overall nuclear arms reductions would hinge on achieving a balance in conventional forces.

The medium-range missiles at the heart of Tuesday’s discussions are the 572 American Pershing 2s and ground-launched cruise missiles that are being installed in Britain, France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium to counter the Soviet Union’s SS-20 missiles aimed at Western Europe.

In addition, each side has deployed some shorter-range nuclear weapons, capable of hitting targets 90 to 300 miles away, but the Soviets’ advantage in this category has also created concern within NATO about reductions in the other nuclear arms.

At least one area of potential dispute appeared to remain unresolved Tuesday. According to one of the participants, Denmark, Norway and Greece objected to language in a communique indicating support for Reagan’s refusal to agree to limits in strategic defense research in exchange for reductions in offensive nuclear forces.

Younger declined to say whether a concluding statement today will address this issue.