Ratify A-Test Pacts but Insist on Inspection, Reagan Urges

President Reagan today asked the Senate to ratify two long-stalled treaties restricting the size of nuclear tests but said the pacts should not take effect until the Soviet Union permits on-site inspection of its tests.

The treaties were signed in 1976 and have never been ratified, although both the United States and the Soviet Union claim to have respected their limits. The pacts ban individual nuclear tests with an explosive force of more than 150 kilotons--150,000 tons of TNT.

Reagan made the request as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee opened hearings on the treaties. While urging their ratification, Reagan said the pacts “are not effectively verifiable in their present form. Large uncertainties are present in the current method employed by the United States to estimate Soviet test yields.”

He said the Senate’s ratification should be subject to a condition requiring the President to certify that the Soviets would permit “direct, accurate yield measurements taken at the site of all appropriate nuclear detonations so that the limitations and obligations of these treaties . . . are effectively verifiable.”