Soviet Experts to Visit U.S. in A-Test Monitoring Effort

Soviet seismologists will visit the United States in November to help select locations in California and Nevada for equipment to monitor the Earth tremors from U.S. nuclear weapons tests, a scientist said Tuesday.

The visit is the latest step in an agreement negotiated privately between U.S. and Soviet scientists that has allowed Americans for the first time to begin such monitoring inside the Soviet Union, said Thomas Cochran, senior staff scientist of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

However, U.S. officials won’t permit the Soviet scientists to visit the actual sites for the equipment because they don’t represent the Soviet government, he said.

Cochran, who initiated the discussions with the Soviet Academy of Sciences that led to the agreement, said at a news conference that both parties have also agreed to establish a computer link between the American and Soviet monitoring stations.

3 Stations Now Operating

The agreement is intended to promote the signing of arms control agreements by making it possible for Americans to verify that the Soviet Union is observing any such agreements, Cochran said.

The three American monitoring stations now operating near the Soviet Union’s principal nuclear test site, near the city of Semipalatinsk, about 1,800 miles southeast of Moscow, are adequate to detect any violations of the current Soviet moratorium on nuclear weapons tests, Cochran said.

“Our stations in effect cover their test site,” he said. “We can monitor explosions down to a few tons.”

The stations also serve as prototypes for the estimated 25 stations that would be needed inside the Soviet Union to monitor compliance with a comprehensive test ban treaty, if one were negotiated, he said.

And, Cochran said, they give American scientists and government officials the ability for the first time to “map” the geology of the Soviet test site, thus allowing more accurate determination of the magnitude of any Soviet nuclear tests.

The Soviet seismologists, led by Igor Nersesov of the Institute of Physics of the Earth in Moscow, are scheduled to arrive in the United States on Nov. 9.

Restrictions Imposed

Because of conditions placed on their visit by the Reagan Administration, they will not be able to visit the proposed monitoring sites in Nevada and California, each about 70 miles from the Nevada test site where U.S. nuclear weapons tests are conducted, Cochran said.

The conditions were that the Soviets witness a nuclear test and a demonstration of a system called CORRTEX, designed to allow the monitoring of nuclear explosions.

Cochran said the Reagan Administration favors a limited test ban treaty overseen by CORRTEX, while the Soviets favor a comprehensive test ban treaty.

The Soviets declined to agree to the conditions, so they will not visit the proposed monitoring sites in Railroad Valley and Nelson, Nev., and Deep Springs, Calif.

“The Soviet position with respect to this is that this is the wrong cast of characters,” Cochran said. “They are seismologists. They are not familiar with CORRTEX.” The Administration “might as well have invited the Kirov Ballet to witness an explosion. It would be as meaningful,” he said.

Administration Disappointed

State Department spokesman Charles Redman said at a briefing Tuesday that the Soviets would have been permitted to visit the sites if they had agreed to come in an official capacity as representatives of the Soviet government.

“Apparently the Soviets have decided to come in a private capacity,” Redman said. He expressed the Administration’s disappointment, saying, “We said before that such issues with such strong national security implications as nuclear testing can only be resolved in a government-to-government context.”

The Soviets will be limited to a one-week stay in the United States with visits to New York, Washington, San Diego--where they will meet with seismologists advising the Natural Resources Defense Council--and Dallas, where some of the seismological equipment that is being installed in the Soviet Union and the United States is being made.