U.S. Rejects New Soviet Proposal : Won’t Remove Warheads on Bonn’s Missiles

The Reagan Administration on Tuesday rejected a Soviet demand for removal of U.S. nuclear warheads from short-range missiles owned by West Germany. It said that the Soviets, by raising the issue, put a new obstacle in the way of arms control in Europe.

State Department spokesman Charles Redman said the United States has never agreed to talk about “third-country systems” as part of the intermediate-range nuclear forces negotiations, which both Washington and Moscow have said are on the verge of success.

“The Soviets had not previously raised the question (of West German missiles), and for them to raise this issue now suggests a lack of serious intent,” Redman said.

Sold to West Germany

In its latest detailed bargaining position, submitted Monday at the arms control talks in Geneva, the Soviet Union insisted on removal of the U.S.-owned warheads for 72 aging Pershing 1A short-range missiles that were sold by the United States to West Germany years ago.

Redman said that the Geneva talks are aimed at a reduction of missiles and launchers on both sides. The number of warheads carried by the missiles, he said, has not directly been a subject of the negotiations, although the objectives of the talks are usually expressed in terms of numbers of warheads that each side may retain.

At the same time, Volker Ruehe, arms control and defense issues expert of West Germany’s ruling Christian Democratic Union, told reporters after meetings with U.S. officials that the latest Soviet proposal is “completely unacceptable” to his government because the Pershing 1A missiles are “a very important part of U.S.-German security cooperation.”

President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, meeting in Iceland last October, agreed in principle to eliminate from Europe all intermediate-range nuclear missiles with ranges of between 1,000 and 3,000 miles.

Under their formula, each side could retain 100 warheads. The Soviets would be permitted to retain 33 of their three-warhead SS-20 missiles in Soviet Asia, and this country could keep 100 Pershing 2 or cruise missiles, with one warhead each, in the continental United States.

There is no such agreement on short-range missiles, those with ranges of 300 to 1,000 miles. The Soviet Union has suggested eliminating this class of weapon from Europe while leaving a residual force outside the Continent. Moscow has 80 SS-12 missiles and 12 SS-23 missiles, each with a single warhead. Although the United States has no missiles of its own in this class, West Germany’s Pershing 1As are of this range.

In its latest proposal, Moscow did not challenge directly the U.S. refusal to include weapons owned by allied countries in the negotiations. But it called for removal of the U.S. warheads, without which the West German missiles would be useless. Under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which West Germany signed, that country is prohibited from obtaining its own nuclear weapons.

‘Clear Soviet Strategy’

Ruehe said that his government supports elimination of medium-range missiles but is not prepared to do away with the short-range systems. He said that Moscow’s latest proposal was “part of a clear Soviet strategy to denuclearize Europe.”

The current negotiations would not affect the shortest-range systems--battlefield nuclear weapons such as land mines, artillery shells and rockets with ranges of less than 300 miles. In a Soviet invasion of West Germany, these weapons would be useful in Germany but would not reach very far beyond.

“The shorter the missiles, the deader the Germans,” Ruehe said. “We can’t agree to bring the ceilings to 300 miles because that would be organizing the nuclear battlefield for Germany only.”

Ruehe asserted that France and Britain, which have independent nuclear forces, agree with West Germany that it would be a mistake to ban short-range nuclear weapons from Europe.

Ruehe met in Washington with Secretary of State George P. Shultz; Kenneth L. Adelman, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; Paul H. Nitze, arms control adviser to Shultz; Frank C. Carlucci, Reagan’s national security adviser, and other officials. He said he found substantial support for his call for an intermediate-range pact that would permit deployment of short-range systems in Europe.

Question of Asia

Redman said that the United States objects to elimination of short-range missiles from Europe unless they also are banned from Asia. Short-range weapons, he said, are small enough to be transported quickly by plane from Asia to Europe in case of conflict.

Adelman, in a speech at Brandeis University, delivered a slashing attack on former President Richard M. Nixon, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.), former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and others who have cautioned against removing nuclear missiles from Europe.

Adelman dismissed as “totally impractical” the suggestion by Nixon and Kissinger in a column for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, published Sunday, that the United States refuse to sign an intermediate-range missile agreement until Moscow’s overwhelming advantage in conventional forces can be reduced.

“The Nixon-Kissinger solution amounts to a killer amendment,” Adelman said. “As the very people who started the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction talks 13 years ago, they should realize that conventional arms control has gone nowhere in 13 years and that this has little prospect of changing.”

He said Aspin has assailed the Reagan Administration “for, in his words, failing to ‘bring home the bacon’ on arms control.” But, Adelman said, when the Administration neared an agreement, Aspin expressed serious doubts.

“Les Aspin had six years to decide whether or not he liked the bacon,” Adelman said. “It’s a little late in the day to be going kosher.”