NATO Defense Chiefs Welcome Missile Cuts

NATO defense ministers today welcomed the possibility of an East-West accord to remove medium- and short-range missiles from Europe but warned it would require NATO to beef up its conventional defenses.

The ministers, ending two days of talks, issued a communique saying the April 14 offer by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to remove hundreds of short- and medium-range nuclear missiles from Europe suggested “the possibility for real progress in relations between East and West.”

But it added that any such nuclear arms accord “must address the disparities . . . that underlie our existing relationship with the East.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, speaking to reporters, said “there was a general recognition . . . that we are closer to a general arms reduction than we have been in a very long time.”

While saying that some improvements had been made in recent years in NATO spending on conventional forces, the ministers warned in their communique that “serious deficiencies still remain” in spending. They pledged to improve the supply of conventional forces “where necessary.”

Some North Atlantic Treaty Organization planners have expressed concern that removal of short- and medium-range missiles could leave Western Europe vulnerable to the East’s superiority in conventional forces.

On Tuesday, Weinberger urged the allies to help safeguard the flow of oil to the West through the Persian Gulf, where Iran and Iraq have been at war for 6 1/2 years.

The ministers made no reference to the gulf in their communique, but NATO has said repeatedly in the past that developments there have a bearing on its security interests.

NATO, while concerned about developments in the gulf, long has shied away from making strong, public statements about the area, which is outside its specific zone of action.

The ministers also discussed prospects of a joint European position on the Soviet arms reduction proposal.

West Germany, the only nation yet to take a stance on the issue, has said it will announce its position in early June.

The ministers also reaffirmed NATO’s longstanding aim to boost national defense spending by 3% annually, although many NATO nations fail to meet that goal, and restated their goal to jointly exploit new technologies for the production of advanced weapons systems.