Arms Pact Up to Soviets, U.S. Envoy Says : Matlock Also Says American Negotiators Deserve More Credit

Jack F. Matlock Jr., the new U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, said Wednesday that an agreement to remove medium-range missiles from Europe can be signed this year--”if the Soviet Union wants one.”

Matlock, who has been in his new post for a month, said the focus of attention on a flurry of arms proposals by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev has resulted in too little credit having been given to American negotiators.

“The areas where we have made progress have been on the basis of the American proposals, which are practical and which move us in the direction of agreement,” he said in an interview.

The United States and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization made the first proposal for removing medium-range missiles, he said, and it was President Reagan who first suggested a 50% reduction in strategic arms.

“By and large,” Matlock said, “what we’re talking about now are the American proposals.”

Even though there are important problems still to be solved in the Geneva talks on the so-called Euromissiles, significant progress has been achieved, he said, and added, “I am one who feels that we could make that agreement this year if the Soviet Union wants to.”

At a summit meeting in Iceland last October, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed in principle to eliminate all medium-range nuclear missiles from Europe. The Soviet Union has also proposed eliminating short-range missiles from Europe--a category that includes about 90 Soviet weapons and none for the United States--but insists that U.S.-owned warheads on short-range West German missiles be eliminated as well, an idea quickly rejected by Washington.

As for a Soviet-American summit meeting in the United States, Gorbachev will have to decide, he said, adding that “the ball is in the Soviet court.”

‘Spotty Relations’

Overall, Matlock said, the record on Soviet-American relations has been “spotty.” Although there has been improvement in cultural exchanges, there has been very little noticeable change for the better on Afghanistan, where Soviet troops are supporting a Communist government in a civil war, or in Nicaragua, where Moscow is supporting a Marxist government that is also fighting U.S.-supported rebels.

“We welcome recent moves on human rights,” the ambassador said. “A number of political prisoners have been released. Emigration figures are still low, but they are going up.”

He said he is confident that the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, which has been plagued with security problems, can now communicate with Washington in confidence and conduct internal discussions without being monitored by Soviet listening devices.

He indicated that among other things the embassy staff has been making more use of couriers, presumably carrying out coded messages to be transmitted from elsewhere to Washington.

The Marine security detachment has been replaced in the wake of allegations that some of the Marines allowed agents of the KGB, the Soviet security and espionage agency, into the embassy’s most secret spaces.

“The Marines I have working for me now are a very fine group,” Matlock said.

A decision on whether to occupy the new embassy building, he said, depends on a study by former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger, which is expected to be completed next month.

“This building is not ideal,” Matlock said, referring to the nine-story structure that visiting congressional investigators recently described as a firetrap. “But I worked here for seven years (on an earlier assignment), so we are going to wait until we have a new building that we know is secure.”

Matlock said that 25 Americans have arrived to take over from Soviet personnel as drivers, mechanics, plumbers and electricians. About 200 Soviet employees last fall were ordered by the Kremlin to leave their jobs, a move made in retaliation for Washington’s ordered cutback of Soviet diplomats in the United States.

Eventually, he said, the support staff will have to be increased to 90 in order to do most of the work that was being done by 200 Soviet nationals.

“Americans . . . are by and large more efficient,” he said, “but we’re also willing to cut back and operate on a more Spartan level.”

Under an agreement with the Soviet government, the United States may assign a total of 225 Americans to the embassy here and the consulate in Leningrad. The Soviet Union has a similar number in the United States, plus its personnel at the United Nations. Matlock said the number of U.S. diplomatic personnel now in the Soviet Union is only 190.

Since the Soviet personnel left, U.S. diplomats and Foreign Service staff have been driving, unloading trucks and sweeping floors. Matlock said it has been “an enormous strain” but that they have performed “magnificently.”

The United States, he said, will never again have Soviet workers at the embassy--”absolutely not.”

“Why should we make ourselves hostage to the local government?” he said. “It’s better to be independent.”