Soviets Apparently Ready to Resume Nuclear Tests

The Soviet Union plans to resume nuclear tests within days and ordered U.S. scientists at the main Soviet test site to shut off their monitoring equipment Saturday, a member of the U.S. group said.

The American monitors were told to keep their equipment turned off for at least three days. The exact time of the Soviet test was not known.

The Kremlin declared a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing in August, 1985, the 40th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima during World War II, and extended it four times before it expired Jan. 1.

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev said in January the Soviets would continue to refrain from testing if the United States did the same. However, after an underground test on Feb. 2 in the United States, Gorbachev said he was no longer bound by the moratorium.

Key to Kremlin Policy

A key part of the Kremlin’s public stand on arms control is the nuclear testing issue.

The United States refused to join the moratorium, saying the Soviet Union is ahead of the United States in its testing program and citing problems with verifying compliance and the need to update its nuclear arsenal.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Sandra McCarty said Saturday she had no information on Soviet plans and could not comment.

Jacob Scherr, a member of a U.S. group monitoring the Soviet test site in northern Kazakhstan, said the scientists were told to shut off their equipment Saturday and keep it off for at least three days.

“We were told there was going to be a test,” said Scherr, speaking by telephone from the city of Karkaralinsk, about 180 miles from the test site at Semipalatinsk.

Scherr is a lawyer for the private, Washington-based Natural Resources Defense Council, which has been monitoring the site under a June, 1986, agreement with the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The scientists are trying to show that a nuclear test ban can be verified.

Under the agreement, American and Soviet scientists installed American-made seismic equipment at three spots near the testing ground, about 1,700 miles southeast of Moscow. One station is staffed by Americans, the others by Soviets.

Scherr said the Americans shut down their equipment at mid-morning Saturday. Asked about the other two stations, he said: “We assume that they will be going through similar procedures.”

Tom Cochran, head of the Natural Resources Defense Council, last week spoke to Gorbachev and Communist Party secretary Anatoly F. Dobrynin, a former ambassador to the United States, about obtaining permission to keep the monitoring devices running during the next Soviet test, Scherr said, adding that he was not surprised the request was turned down.

“We were told earlier on that in the event of a test, we would have to shut down our equipment,” he said.

He added, however, that the meetings with Dobrynin and Gorbachev made the U.S. team “hopeful there might be a reversal.”