Outlook Good for Arms Pact, Shultz Believes

Secretary of State George P. Shultz said Saturday that he sees “a pretty good prospect” of reaching an agreement on controlling intermediate-range nuclear missiles during his trip to Moscow next month.

Talking to reporters aboard his Air Force jetliner on the flight back to the United States after a 10-day trip to Asia, Shultz said approval of such a treaty on intermediate nuclear forces, or INF, might also provide the push needed to break the stalemate over limitation of long-range strategic weapons.

Shultz, who stopped off to spend the weekend at his home on the Stanford University campus, is scheduled to confer in Moscow on April 13-16 with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze. It will be their first meeting since a tense session in Vienna last November when, according to U.S. officials, the Soviet side refused even to discuss arms control unless Washington agreed in advance to severe restrictions on the “Star Wars” missile defense program.

Shultz said that he and Shevardnadze have declined to meet since the Vienna session because prospects were dim for constructive accomplishment. But he said the atmosphere is far better now.

“It is a good time to have a meeting to see if we can’t move the ball along--across the board of our agenda,” Shultz said. “We don’t think of this as just an INF trip . . . although obviously the INF opportunity is of special significance.” He said that he and Shevardnadze also will discuss human rights issues such as Jewish emigration, bilateral matters such as consular offices, and regional issues such as Afghanistan.

Shultz speculated that Moscow had hoped Western public opinion would force the United States to abandon its “Star Wars” plan, known officially as Strategic Defense Initiative or SDI. When that tactic failed, he said, the Soviets probably decided to try something else.

“They may have felt that the reaction would be a lot of pressure in one way or another to cripple SDI,” he said. “The outcome of Reykjavik (President Reagan’s Iceland summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev last October) seems, if anything, to have strengthened SDI.”

Ready to Separate Issues

Gorbachev said last week that Moscow is prepared to consider a treaty limiting intermediate-range nuclear weapons separately from the deadlocked negotiations over control of long-range nuclear missiles and space defense systems. Moscow recently had been insisting that all negotiations must be completed before agreement in any area could be approved.

The United States and the Soviet Union already agree in principle to remove all intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe and to limit each side to a maximum of 100 intermediate-range warheads deployed beyond the range of European cities--in the Asian areas of the Soviet Union and in the United States. But many significant details--including methods of verification--remain to be worked out.

The Times reported last week, for instance, that the United States has proposed that the Soviet Union station all of its 100 allowed warheads in a single base near Novosibirsk in Siberia, where they would not be able to reach most of Western Europe and Japan.

Shultz, usually the most cautious of diplomats, did not try to disguise his optimism when he described the conditions for his visit to Moscow.

“Now that the Soviets have gone back to their pre-Reykjavik position of not linking INF with the rest of the package, there seems to be some prospect, in fact pretty good prospect, of getting something worked out in the INF field,” Shultz said.

‘Edgy’ on Verification

Nevertheless, Shultz said, a number of important obstacles remain. Perhaps most important, he said, the United States, the Soviet Union and American allies in Europe are all “edgy” about verification measures.

He said that on-site verification--long a Western demand that was steadfastly resisted by the Soviets--now cuts both ways. American allies in Europe, for instance, are concerned that verification of a U.S.-Soviet INF agreement would allow the Soviets to poke into their most guarded secrets.

Because U.S. intermediate-range nuclear missiles are stationed in Britain, West Germany, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands, Soviet verification inspections would take place in those countries.

Asked specifically about European concerns, Shultz said, “Everybody is edgy about intrusive verification, including us and the Soviets. It is easy to talk about verification, but when it comes home to roost, it is a different matter. But it is something we all have to face up to.

Beyond Spy Satellites

“If we want an arms-control regime . . . we will have to have forms of verification that go beyond national technical means (spy satellites that were used to verify previous arms limitation agreements),” he said. “That’s all there is to it.”

But if Washington and Moscow can agree on ways to verify an INF agreement, the same methods could be applied to a pact on strategic arms. This might help break the deadlock in the strategic arms reduction talks (START).

“The verification problems that you confront in the INF case are rather similar to the problems that you confront in the START case,” he said. “Of course, the location of deployments are different but conceptually, they are rather parallel.

“If we get anywhere in INF, we will have to get somewhere on a different order of verification than we have had in the past and if we do so, that will, in turn, put into place something important relative to strategic arms,” he said.