NATO Warily Endorses 50% Missile Cutback

The NATO allies, apprehensive of a future with fewer U.S. nuclear weapons, Friday reaffirmed their strategy of nuclear deterrence and backed away from supporting a U.S. proposal to eliminate ballistic nuclear missiles.

Defense ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in a communique issued at the end of a two-day defense planning committee meeting, endorsed President Reagan’s proposal at the Iceland summit to negotiate with the Soviet Union for a 50% reduction in the long-range nuclear missiles and work toward an agreement on intermediate-range missiles.

But they made no commitment to support Reagan’s more sweeping proposal at the October summit for the elimination of ballistic missiles in 10 years, although Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said it remained part of U.S. proposals at the Geneva arms talks.

The communique said in part: “Against the background of existing Warsaw Pact strength and ongoing force improvements, this (NATO) strategy continues to require effective nuclear deterrence, based on a mix of systems.”

NATO officials said the stress put on the continued need for the alliance to maintain a nuclear deterrence took on added significance in the light of the Europeans’ anxieties over their future security with a reduced U.S. nuclear “umbrella.”

The defense ministers said they rejected unilateral disarmament which, the communique said, “would result in the abandonment by NATO of its deterrent strategy and hence the basis for its security and stability.” NATO officials said the phrase appeared to be aimed at Britain’s opposition Labor Party, which has said it will scrap the country’s nuclear arms and remove U.S. cruise missiles if it comes to power at the next elections.

Weinberger disclosed Friday that NATO has deployed about one-half of the 464 U.S. cruise nuclear missiles that it plans to station in Western Europe by 1988.

His comment implied that dozens of the low-flying, subsonic missiles had been deployed since NATO said in December, 1985, in its last public statement on the subject, that 128 cruise missiles were operational in Britain, Italy and Belgium.