Reagan Buoyed by Soviet Arms Offer : Shultz Expects NATO to Decide Soon on Shorter-Range Missile Proposal

President Reagan said Thursday that he “remains optimistic” that the United States and Soviet Union will conclude an arms control agreement this year.

After meeting for an hour and 15 minutes with Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who had just returned from meetings in Moscow with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the President said:

“It’s my hope that the process now under way continues to move forward and Mr. Gorbachev and I can complete an historic agreement on East-West relations at a summit.”

Shultz’s work in three days in Moscow appeared to edge the United States and the Soviet Union closer than at any time in the past to reducing the number of medium-range nuclear missiles that face each other across Europe.

Brussels to Santa Barbara

Shultz flew to Reagan’s mountaintop ranch 30 miles northwest of Santa Barbara at the end of a long day that began when he briefed foreign ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations in Brussels. He met with Reagan in a red tile-roofed guest cottage behind the ranch house.

Shultz said in Brussels that the alliance had “a hard decision to make” on whether to accept the Soviet offer to eliminate shorter-range ballistic missiles from superpower arsenals.

But it was a decision that “we’ve been wanting the opportunity to make” since intermediate-range nuclear force (INF) negotiations began in 1981, he added. And it would be made “promptly,” he said, in order to move ahead toward a treaty that would deal primarily with longer-range nuclear missiles.

Reagan, reading a statement to a group of reporters outside his ranch house after meeting for more than an hour with the secretary of state, said, “On intermediate-range nuclear missiles, we’ve narrowed the gaps a little more.”

‘We May Have New Ideas’

He said that after consultations with the allies, “we may have new ideas to offer.”

In addition to the progress on medium-range weapons, Reagan said, talks on strategic, or long-range nuclear weapons, and on space defenses were “detailed and useful, and will intensify.”

Says He Is ‘Hopeful’

Pressed by a reporter on whether he and Gorbachev would meet this year regardless of whether an arms control agreement is concluded, Reagan said he looks forward to such a meeting, and is “hopeful we can have a summit.” But, he added, “There have to be some substantial agreements that make it worthwhile.”

“I remain optimistic about an agreement this year,” he said.

Reagan, wearing blue trousers, a pink cowboy shirt and cowboy boots, and Shultz, in a blue pin-striped suit, were joined at the ranch by White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. and Frank C. Carlucci, the President’s assistant for national security affairs.

Allied Sensitivity

Reagan’s frequent references to the NATO allies reflects the sensitivity in Europe over the prospects that the United States’ “nuclear umbrella” will be withdrawn, leaving the Atlantic Alliance’s conventional forces at a disadvantage when compared with the greater force deployed by the Warsaw Pact nations.

“People are considering an important offer that the Soviets put on the table when I was in Moscow,” Shultz said. “And you don’t just react to things like that, you think them over.”

The secretary said the NATO allies are discussing the elimination of not only the medium-range missiles, but also the shorter-range weapons--in effect leaving Europe nearly bare of nuclear missiles.

“They’re taking counsel, and we’ll come to a view,” he said.

Reagan Praises Shultz

Reagan praised Shultz, who he said “put forward our positions in Moscow with firmness and great skill.”

He said that in addition to the progress on medium-range weapons, “there was movement on nuclear testing talks and on a ban on chemical weapons.”

Shultz, speaking later to reporters at the temporary White House press room here, said:

“The developments we’ve seen in the past week give fresh hope that we may be getting closer in our relations with the Soviet Union to (a) safer, better future.”

He said that in the area of strategic arms, the United States and Soviet Union had “made a little progress--not much.”

The secretary of state said that in Brussels, the allies “were uniform in welcoming the results of the Moscow trip and in welcoming the approach we took as Mr. Gorbachev tabled, during my meeting with him, a new proposal on short-range INF missiles.”

Under the Soviet proposal, this class of weapons would be eliminated within one year of the signing of an overall reduction in the intermediate nuclear force.

Thus, Shultz appeared to indicate that the allies might come around to accept the removal of much of the alliance’s nuclear weaponry on which they have depended.

‘A Wonderful Box’

Asked whether the Soviet proposal to eliminate the shorter-range weapons had placed the West in a box--by forcing it to forgo not only the longer-range Pershing 2 missiles in the intermediate class, but also the shorter-range weapons, Shultz replied:

“If we are placed in a box, it’s a wonderful box to be in. It’s the box we’ve been trying to get into.”

But, he said, “that doesn’t mean anything goes,” as the two sides try to pare down their arsenals.

He said the Europeans could remain assured, “from the fact we are there, the fact that we have troops there, the fact that we behave like an ally.”

And, he said, consultations with them would produce a response to the Soviet proposal “long before” Reagan and the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan meet in Venice at their annual economic summit in early June.

After the Shultz briefing in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Lord Carrington was noncommittal on the Soviet offer, which Gorbachev had put forth with a challenge to accept it immediately. “What are you afraid of?” Gorbachev asked the United States and its NATO allies.

Consultations Due

U.S. and European diplomats said the proposal is likely to be approved by NATO, after several weeks of intense consultations, if the lower-range limit of these missiles, now considered to be about 350 miles, can be firmly fixed in the agreement.

Otherwise, NATO and U.S. officials said, they fear that they will lose their option to modernize and improve aging missiles of even shorter range in the Western inventory in Europe.

U.S. officials listed a variety of additional concerns about any hasty acceptance of the Soviet proposal. The first of these is that eliminating all nuclear missiles with ranges of 350 to 3,000 miles--those categorized as intermediate-range nuclear forces--could create momentum toward a “denuclearized” Europe. This would destroy the NATO strategy of relying on nuclear weapons to counter Soviet superiority in conventional ground forces.

Doctrine Challenged

More immediately, the Soviet offer challenges the NATO military doctrine of “flexible response,” which, Shultz said, was adopted to keep NATO’s options from being “limited to the light switch or not”--that is, all-out nuclear war or surrender.

The concept of flexible response, a senior U.S. official said, calls for “a hierarchy of military capabilities, going from conventional up through nuclear, so that you could be flexible in your response and adequately respond to any kind of attack.”

“You don’t have to cover all the rungs in the possible ladders of escalation,” the official went on, “but in order to have a policy of flexible response, it is wise to be reasonably covered at each one of the major rungs.”

European Concern

Flexible response will remain NATO doctrine in any case, officials said, adding that the issue is whether to be without the “rungs” in both the longer-range INF missiles (1,000 to 3,000 miles) and the shorter-range INF missiles (down to 350 miles) at the same time.

‘A New World’

A final concern in the context of the Soviet offer, another senior U.S. official said, is that “after Reykjavik (scene of last fall’s American-Soviet summit conference in Iceland), there’s a new world out there of reduced nuclear weapons rather than increased.” The official’s point was that President Reagan and Gorbachev agreed at Reykjavik to cut their nuclear arsenals in half, in contrast to previous arms control treaties that allowed increases in warheads up to specified limits.

“Managing reduction is turning out to be a particular new challenge of our times,” the U.S. official said. “It raises the question of how fast. Some people are saying, ‘Let’s slow down this process so we can absorb this new experience.’ Others are saying, ‘This is an opportunity we can’t pass up, because we don’t have these weapons systems.’ ”

The United States has no short-range INF missiles in Europe, but there have been proposals to introduce new missiles in this category, the official said, adding that “there is simply no easy path,” despite the implications in Gorbachev’s challenge.

Living Preference

Put another way, for all the recent Western demands for reduced Soviet missile superiority at all levels, many NATO military commanders would prefer to live with a Soviet numerical edge rather than with the equality of zero nuclear missiles.

The broad INF agreement discussed in Moscow, which both sides agree is ripe for completion, would focus first on longer-range INF missiles. All would be eliminated from Europe, but each side would retain 100 warheads--the Soviets’ to be kept in Asia, the Americans’ in the continental United States. The reductions would be accomplished within four or five years, according to U.S. officials who were present at the Moscow negotiations.

At present, the Soviets have 1,323 warheads on the triple-warhead SS-20s. Of these, 810 are in Europe, and all would be eliminated. The additional 513 warheads are east of the Ural Mountains, and they would be reduced to 100. The United States has about 316 warheads on its longer-range INF missiles in Europe, 100 of which would be saved but stationed in the United States.

‘Collateral Restraints’

To prevent the Soviets from circumventing the agreement on longer-range missiles, the United States has always demanded that “collateral restraints” be put on the shorter-range missiles, which might be moved forward or modified to substitute for the withdrawn missiles.

The missile systems that Washington specifically wants to limit, or “capture,” as arms control experts put it, are two Soviet systems capable of being upgraded: the SS-12/22, with a range of about 600 miles, about 130 to 140 of which have been deployed; and the SS-23, with a range of 350 miles, about 12 of which have been deployed.

The United States has no missiles of comparable range in Europe, although West Germany has 72 Pershing 1-A missiles with a range of 450 miles. Their nuclear warheads are under U.S. control, but the United States has refused to negotiate on weapons held by its allies, including 44 French Pluton missiles in this range. No Soviet allies have missiles in this category. In this situation, the United States proposed that shorter-range INF missiles be limited to equal levels on both sides at some reduced level. It did not propose a zero level, however.

Shorter-Range Attention

The new Gorbachev proposal is zero for the shorter-range INF systems, to be achieved within one year. He also proposed eliminating all nuclear missiles with shorter ranges, but this proposal is to be negotiated subsequently and in a different form, he said.

Serious attention is now focused on the offer related to the shorter-range INF missiles. Some NATO nations, among them West Germany, favor reducing the lower-range limits for these missiles below 350 miles, to include the Soviet Scud missile that has a range of about 100 miles. About 600 Scuds and other very-short-range missiles are targeted on West Germany by the Soviets and some of their allies.

But NATO and U.S. officials complain that lowering the range would preclude improvements to the U.S. Lance missile, with a 70-mile range, which the NATO military commander, Gen. Bernard W. Rogers, wants upgraded in range and capability as part of the modernization program approved by NATO two years ago.

Gerstenzang reported from Santa Barbara and Toth from Brussels.