Hopes Fading for Early Pact on Euromissiles, Western Officials Say

Hopes for a Euromissile agreement by this summer have faded in recent weeks, as West Germany has equivocated on the latest Soviet proposal and Moscow has muddied the waters with controversial and inconsistent proposals at the arms talks in Geneva, according to U.S. and Western alliance officials.

At the same time, new signs of movement have appeared in the long-range strategic arms reduction talks (START) and in the space defense area, which has long been viewed as the most difficult. Among the signs:

--In the START talks, the Soviets have responded to the U.S. draft treaty presented last week by promising to submit their own draft--”and sooner than you think,” a Soviet official said--of a proposed agreement that would reduce arsenals on both sides by 50% over five or seven years. Faster progress can be made, officials said, by working with formal treaty language rather than proposals.

--In the missile defense area, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev has called for prohibiting deployment of a U.S. missile shield, in contrast to Soviet negotiators at Geneva who want to stop the development of such a shield under President Reagan’s proposed Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

The United States has already offered to forgo deployment for seven years but refuses to bar research and development of missile defenses. Gorbachev’s choice of words could lead to progress in the negotiations if they signal a shift in Moscow’s opposition to the SDI program.

But most attention is still focused on the talks on Euromissiles, or intermediate-range weapons, the pace of which now seems slower than had been expected by U.S. and Soviet officials in the wake of Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s trip to Moscow last month.

Bonn’s Indecisiveness

Some impatience has already begun to emerge within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with the apparent inability of the West German government to make up its mind about Moscow’s offer last month to eliminate shorter-range as well as medium-range nuclear missiles from Europe.

“In the end, Washington is going to have to decide the issue, and one group of Germans or another is going to be unhappy,” one official here said. “Maybe the United States should do it sooner rather than later.”

The Reagan Administration had asked NATO for a prompt decision on the issue, in part to prevent the political opposition in West Germany, which would be most directly affected by the move, from coalescing, another official said.

But the split in Bonn between Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who favors accepting the offer, and Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who opposes it, has hardened in the interim.

The Kohl government would have felt under greater pressure to decide if the Soviets had been consistent in their proposals to Shultz in Moscow and in their Euromissile treaty draft introduced in the Geneva negotiations two weeks ago.

“Now we’re no longer in a hurry,” a senior West German defense official said. He would reject the Soviet offer to eliminate the shorter-range missiles in favor of setting a lower ceiling on such weapons. “The Soviet draft needs going over carefully,” he said. “Additional negotiations will be needed. There is no way that an agreement (on Euromissiles) will be reached before the end of the year.”

In these negotiations, the United States and the Soviet Union have already agreed to eliminate the medium-range (1,000 to 3,000 miles) nuclear missiles from Europe. The newest Soviet offer would also eliminate the shorter-range missiles (down to 300 miles), but it has been put forward in two versions.

Moscow Version Picked

In Moscow, the Soviets propose to eliminate the shorter-range missiles “globally”--that is, in Europe and everywhere else. But in their presentation in Geneva, the Soviets offered to eliminate the short-range weapons in Europe only and set equal limits for the missiles elsewhere.

When challenged on this significant difference, Soviet negotiators in Geneva told U.S. negotiators to accept the version given in Moscow, officials said. But only when the Soviet proposal is submitted in writing will the United States and the West Germans be certain of what it actually entails.

The Soviets introduced a wholly new element in the negotiations two weeks ago in a statement accompanying the Euromissile draft treaty. They called for the removal of U.S. nuclear warheads on Pershing 1A short-range missiles owned and deployed by the West Germans.

The United States has refused to negotiate on German missiles. This standoff could become a major obstacle in the negotiations depending on whether NATO and the West Germans endorse or oppose the Soviet short-range missile offer, officials said.

Verification difficulties have also arisen since the Soviets submitted their draft treaty for a Euromissile agreement.

While the draft was generally applauded by U.S. negotiators, Moscow appears to be balking at on-site inspection of missile inventories when the treaty begins to take effect, and of inspections of facilities suspected of hiding illegal missiles, sources said.

The Soviets have, however, accepted inspection of facilities which are declared by each side to be related to missile production, and of facilities for destruction of missiles which are to be eliminated.

So far, Bonn’s inability to take a position on the Soviet short-range missile offer has only marginally slowed the pace of U.S.-Soviet negotiations at Geneva, sources said. But its indecision will begin to materially affect progress in those talks within the foreseeable future.