Broad Interpretation of ’72 Pact Blocking Major Arms Cuts, Soviets Say

The Soviet delegation to the nuclear arms talks here warned Tuesday that the Reagan Administration’s proposed broad interpretation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty “is effectively blocking a solution to the issue of radical reductions in nuclear arms.”

The chief Soviet negotiator on space weapons, Alexei A. Obukhov, told a news conference that “if the arms race goes into space, reduction in nuclear weapons will be impossible.”

The Soviets called the news conference as the senior U.S. arms control adviser in the State Department, Paul H. Nitze, prepared to head for Europe to brief Western allies on the tentative new ABM interpretation, which is designed to furnish legal clearance for testing components for a space-based anti-ballistic missile system as part of President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative--the “Star Wars” program.

Nitze will be visiting London, Brussels, The Hague, Rome and Bonn, while another senior U.S. arms control adviser, Lt. Gen. Edward L. Rowny, will be on a similar mission to Tokyo and other capitals in the Far East.

Washington’s allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are aware that, whatever they have to say, the Reagan Administration is likely to proceed with its interpretation, or reinterpretation, of the ABM treaty. Nevertheless, they are expected to tell Nitze and Rowny that abandoning ABM treaty restraints is likely to kill a last chance for any nuclear arms agreement in the final two years of the Reagan government.

Obukhov clearly had Washington’s NATO allies in mind when he told the press: “Preservation and strengthening of the ABM treaty is only technically a bilateral issue between the Soviet Union and the United States. Its significance goes far beyond the Soviet-U.S. relationship. Therefore, every country and every statesman who cherish the ideals of international peace and security must speak up and display a sense of responsibility in this regard.”

He said that “while controversy goes on both in Washington and among the NATO allies, the U.S. Administration has already formally proposed in the Geneva negotiations that this interpretation be legalized.”

However, U.S. delegation sources said that no new U.S. proposal has been made here.