U.S. Breaches SALT II Treaty With 131st B-52

The United States violated ceilings in the unratified SALT II nuclear arms treaty Friday when another Air Force B-52 bomber capable of carrying atomic-tipped cruise missiles became operational.

The treaty’s numerical limits were breached when the eight-engine B-52 arrived at Carswell Air Force Base in Texas after having been modified to carry as many as 12 low-flying cruise missiles.

It is the 131st B-52 that has been modified, putting the United States over the limit in the treaty, which permits only 130 cruise-equipped bombers if no other atomic weapons are eliminated from the U.S. arsenal.

The Navy decided against retiring an aging Poseidon missile-firing submarine from the U.S. force in order to keep America under the limits of various types of weapons permitted by the 1979 treaty, the Pentagon said last week.

Gorbachev Critical

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, concluding a visit to India, criticized the U.S. decision, saying, “We regard this as a major mistake, which will make it more difficult to search for the approaches for disarmament.”

Several Democrats in Congress also criticized the U.S. action.

Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), who will become chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee in January, said in a statement, “I believe the President’s decision . . . gives the Soviet Union a military advantage, with its near-term missile production capabilities, as well as a substantial world propaganda advantage.”

“It will cause our allies abroad considerable political discomfort and it will now be much harder to reach a bipartisan consensus on strategic weapons and arms control here at home,” Nunn said.

‘Very Bad Decision’

Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, termed the U.S. action “a very bad decision” that was being taken now because it “shores up Ronald Reagan with the right wing.”

Aspin, interviewed on the “CBS Morning News,” said conservatives are unhappy with the SALT II pact and are feeling “such unhappiness with Ronald Reagan over the hostages-for-equipment swap and the way that that was done. . . . “

House Speaker-designate Rep. Jim Wright (D-Tex.), called it a setback to the cause of nuclear disarmament and a further blow to the credibility of U.S. foreign policy.

“It is embarrassing that our country now can be portrayed as the recalcitrant one in the search for peace and as the cause of the renewal of the nuclear arms race,” Wright said.

‘Tremendous Mistake’

Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, also was critical.

“It’s a tremendous mistake that this Administration is going to regret,” she said. “Once we break the limits, the other side can also, and it’s much more profitable for them. The Soviets have a number of huge missiles that can carry more warheads and they have remained under the limits up to now but they can add more warheads to their weapons more quickly than we can.”

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), said, “There is simply no good reason for the U.S. to move outside the SALT II limits at this time” and said it means “the further stockpiling of nuclear weapons by both superpowers in an unbridled arms race.”

The treaty was signed in 1979 by then-President Jimmy Carter and the late Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev. But it was never ratified by the U.S. Senate after critics charged that the Soviets might be able to cheat without being detected.

‘Fatally Flawed’

In his successful 1980 campaign against Carter, Reagan termed the pact “fatally flawed” but once he took office, Reagan pledged to live up to the treaty’s limits as long as the Soviets did the same.

Reagan has repeatedly charged that the Soviets are violating the treaty and because of those violations, he announced last May 27 that his Administration would no longer be bound by the treaty’s limits in making decisions on what weapons to build.

Instead, the President said, his decisions on U.S. forces would be based on “the nature and magnitude of the threat posed by Soviet strategic forces.”

Reagan’s decision had come under fire in Congress, particularly from Democrats who argued that the pact has forced the Soviets to scrap large numbers of nuclear weapons to observe its limits. Soviet violations of the pact are in areas other than total number of weapons, the Democrats have said.