U.S.-Soviet Arms Talks in Vienna End in Failure : Shultz and Shevardnadze Trade Accusations as They Disagree on Accords Reached in Iceland

Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, accusing each other of backtracking on matters seemingly settled at the Iceland summit meeting, failed Thursday to make any progress toward an arms control pact.

“I can’t say the meetings have moved arms control matters along in any significant way, and I regret this,” a clearly disappointed Shultz told a press conference after he and Shevardnadze completed five hours of talks spread over two days.

The Soviet foreign minister was even blunter, saying the meetings with Shultz “left us with a bitter taste.” Shevardnadze accused the U.S. side of trying “to beat a complete retreat from the high ground reached in Iceland.”

‘It Was a Bust’

Summing up the meetings, which took place while Shultz and Shevardnadze were in Vienna for the conference to review the 1975 Helsinki accords on security and human rights, one senior U.S. official said: “It was a bust.”

Another official who took part in a three-hour meeting of U.S. and Soviet arms control experts accused the Soviets of refusing even to draw up a joint statement of the issues that were settled by President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev last month in Iceland and the issues that remained in dispute. The experts were trying to prepare the ground for Thursday’s final Shultz-Shevardnadze meeting.

“My opinion is they were trying to lay the groundwork for a public relations campaign to denigrate the United States and build up their own position,” the official said.

The U.S. side presented a paper summarizing the Reykjavik talks, listing agreements and disagreements. On disputed issues, the paper set out the position of each side. U.S. officials said they hoped to go through the document paragraph by paragraph with the Soviet delegation. Each side would have had the right to change in any way it wished the description of its position. The resulting statement could have formed the basis for further negotiations.

But U.S. officials said the Soviets balked at this approach. Instead, the Soviets proposed a three-page summary of the Reykjavik discussions on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. One U.S. participant said that consideration of the Soviet paper bogged down at the second paragraph, which said Reagan and Gorbachev had agreed to eliminate all offensive nuclear weapons within 10 years.

That reopened a dispute that has been going on since the two leaders ended their Iceland talks. The official U.S. position is that Reagan agreed only to eliminate all offensive ballistic mi1936943468discussed eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons--including those carried by bombers and cruise missiles--without indicating any sort of timetable.

The U.S. official said the Soviets would not agree to a statement saying the issue is still undecided. Other members of the U.S. delegation said the Soviets balked at all U.S. attempts to clarify matters still in dispute.

Plenary Meeting Scheduled

Shultz and Shevardnadze could agree on only one thing Thursday--to hold a plenary meeting today of the arms control negotiators in Geneva in order to give Moscow a chance to submit formal proposals based on its interpretation of the Reagan-Gorbachev talks. The United States introduced its package of post-Iceland proposals last week.

The current round of Geneva talks, which was tentatively scheduled to end last Tuesday, is now expected to continue into next week. The next round will open in January.

Shultz had expected to arrange for another meeting with Shevardnadze, probably in Moscow in December or January, to continue the dialogue. But Shultz said that no additional talks were scheduled, though they could be set up on short notice.

An early summit between Reagan and Gorbachev also now seems to be out of the question. Shultz said the subject “never came up” in his talks with Shevardnadze.

Shevardnadze was unyielding in a statement he issued before leaving Vienna for the return flight to Moscow. He said the U.S. position is “a mixed bag of old mothballed views plus the concessions made by the Soviet Union in Reykjavik.”

“We cannot avoid the impression,” he said, “that our partners want to forget Reykjavik as soon as possible.”

Still, the Soviet side produced little of the detailed information made available by U.S. participants. Shultz was accompanied to Vienna by the Reagan Administration’s top arms control strategists, and he said the U.S. side was “prepared to move forward.”

As it was at Reykjavik, the ultimate sticking point in Vienna was Soviet insistence on limiting to laboratory research the U.S. program to develop a space-based missile defense system, the so-called “Star Wars” program, formally known as the Strategic Defense Initiative.

‘Fixed on One Issue’

“They were fixed on only one issue,” Shultz said. “It seemed to us that they have the objective of crippling the President’s effort to find out how we can defend ourselves against ballistic missiles. If that is their objective, it is not going to work.”

Another U.S. official said later that under the Soviet proposal, the United States would have to abandon more than half of the tests it has planned for “Star Wars” technology.

The official said Moscow’s plan would permit some experimentation in space provided it was conducted in a recognized “space laboratory.” But the official said the United States did not consider the proposal to be a significant effort to alter Moscow’s original position.

The first public word that the Soviets would tolerate space lab research came from a Soviet official at the United Nations last week, but the U.S. official said the Soviet team privately had made the same offer at Reykjavik.

Missile Sublimits Proposed

Shultz said the United States sought to advance the negotiations on long-range strategic nuclear forces by proposing sublimits on ballistic missiles, the weapon that Washington considers to be the most dangerous. Reagan and Gorbachev agreed in Iceland to limit each side to 1,600 strategic nuclear launchers with no more than 6,000 warheads.

In his presentation in Vienna, Shultz said he suggested that each side be permitted to have no more than 3,300 of its warheads on ballistic missiles and no more than 1,650 of those on the so-called heavy missiles with more than six warheads.

These proposals basically split the difference between earlier U.S. and Soviet positions. But Shultz said Moscow refused even to discuss the proposal.

Shultz said he also sought Soviet agreement on a verification plan discussed, but apparently not approved, at Reykjavik. The plan calls for both sides to exchange reliable information about their current strategic forces, to permit on-site inspection of weapons removed from service and to allow regular monitoring to prevent cheating. Again, he said, the Soviets would not consider the plan.

On intermediate-range nuclear forces, Shultz said Shevardnadze confirmed the Iceland agreement to eliminate all intermediate-range missiles in Europe and to limit each side to 100 warheads in the rest of the world, with the Soviet weapons to be based in the Asian part of the Soviet Union and the U.S. missiles in the United States.

Shultz said the Soviet side refused to consider U.S. plans to round out that agreement by determining verification procedures, fixing a timetable for carrying it out and dealing with short-range nuclear forces, which were not addressed at Reykjavik.

Tried to Set Rules

Shultz also said he tried without success to set the rules for resuming negotiations aimed at reducing or eliminating nuclear testing.

“We’ll keep at it,” the secretary added. “There’s a chance in the end we’ll get there.”

Meanwhile, in Moscow, the official Novosti news agency said the Soviet Union will end a 15-month-old unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing when it expires Jan. 1 unless the United States agrees to go along with the ban. Novosti said increasing pressure from the Soviet military and concerns that a continuation of the moratorium would jeopardize the country’s security meant that a further extension was not likely.