U.S. to Propose Deep Arms Cuts : Plans to Follow Up Summit Offers Amid Signs of Soviet Flexibility

The Reagan Administration, buoyed by a hint of Soviet flexibility, will follow up on U.S. offers made at the Iceland summit by formally proposing deep cuts in long-range and intermediate-range offensive nuclear arms, senior U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The proposal, approved Monday night at a White House meeting presided over by President Reagan, will be presented to the Soviets this week at the arms talks in Geneva. The new instructions were transmitted to chief U.S. negotiator Max M. Kampelman late Monday.

The Soviets are expected similarly to follow up on their summit positions, though it was unclear how closely they will adhere to the final proposals put forth by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev at his meeting with Reagan in Reykjavik.

Although the current round of Geneva talks is likely to end before serious negotiations can take place, some hint of the prospects for new agreements built on Reykjavik are expected from the meeting next week in Vienna between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

Hopeful Sign

In what may be a hopeful sign, Soviet officials in Moscow appear to have eased the degree to which they have linked long-range and intermediate-range offensive arms, as well as space defenses.

Gorbachev said after Reykjavik that all issues are part of an all-or-nothing package, suggesting that progress in one area had to parallel progress in the others. But U.S. officials have been told that each issue can be negotiated to completion independently, though all must be settled and signed at the same time.

The United States has long held that each issue should be discussed and resolved at its own pace, with offensive arms having the greatest urgency. The Soviets, however, want to curb the U.S. space defense effort--formally known as the Strategic Defense Initiative but popularly called “Star Wars”--before agreements to cut offensive missiles can be reached.

Shultz and Shevardnadze have been scheduled to address the opening round of the resumed Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which begins Nov. 4 in Vienna. Both men have said that they will use the opportunity to meet, and Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov said Tuesday that the Vienna session could clear up confusion over arms control issues.

“We have to continue what we started in Reykjavik,” Gerasimov said in Moscow. “Reykjavik brought to life a lot of hopes and, if we stop now, if we fold our hands, we could lose the momentum. If the Vienna forum did not exist, we would have had to invent it.”

The United States intends to submit proposals in the three areas that have been the subject of negotiations at Geneva: strategic offensive missiles and bombers, with a range of 3,000 miles and more; intermediate-range (1,000-3,000-mile range) missiles; and space missile defenses.

On strategic weapons, senior officials said the United States offer will consist of two parts: a 50% cut over five years in all types of these weapons--including land-based and submarine-based ballistic missiles and bombers that can carry air-launched cruise missiles as well as bombs. The 50% cut would be followed by a reduction to zero in the next five years in ballistic missiles only.

The two sides at Reykjavik basically agreed to the first part, but major details remain to be resolved. After five years, both sides would have a maximum of 1,600 “delivery vehicles” (missiles and bombers) with no more than 6,000 warheads. The Soviets initially wanted every type of delivery vehicle cut by 50%, and the United States sought sublimits on how many warheads could be carried by each type of delivery vehicle.

In these proposals, each side sought to protect its best weapons--U.S. bombers and cruise missiles versus the huge Soviet land-based ICBMs--and proposed the deepest cuts in the other’s strongest categories of arms.

At Reykjavik, U.S. officials said, the Soviets altered their position but did not accept the U.S. proposal on sublimits--roughly, 3,000 warheads on land-based ICBMs, another 1,500 on submarine-launched missiles and 1,500 on cruise missiles. The question was left unresolved, with both sides free to raise the issue of sublimits in later negotiations.

100 in Asia, 100 in U.S.

The two sides in Reykjavik also agreed to eliminate intermediate-range missiles in Europe. But in Asia, the Soviets sought only to freeze their forces at the present size (513 warheads), while the United States wanted all Soviet weapons eliminated. The two sides agreed that the Soviets would reduce their warheads in Asia to 100, while 100 warheads would be stationed in the continental United States.

The new U.S. proposal will contain those elements, U.S. officials said, and will call for limits on shorter-range nuclear missiles in Europe (those with a 350- to 900-mile range). The Soviets now have about 1,000 such missiles in Europe; the United States has none with those precise ranges but has missiles with still shorter ranges there.

In the space defense area, the U.S. proposal will call for a 10-year moratorium on deployment of any system, during which research, development and testing would be permitted on systems based on high-energy beams like lasers and other exotic principles. After 10 years, either side would be free to deploy such systems.

The Soviets want to restrict such work to laboratories, with no testing in space of any elements of a weapon system that would be used in space. Although they agreed to the 10-year nonwithdrawal period, they did not agree that deployment could follow it.

The Associated Press reported that the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were wary of portions of the new proposal, out of concern about the impact that a missile ban might have on defending Western Europe from Soviet attack. North Atlantic Treaty Organization ground forces are outmanned by Warsaw Pact troops. But the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., attended the Monday meeting and endorsed the package.

White House spokesman Larry Speakes, accompanying Reagan on a political campaign trip Tuesday, confirmed that the meeting took place. He said it was significant because “everyone in the (arms control) community now is fully on board on what we lay on the table. It’s what we had on the table in Iceland.”