Warsaw Pact Finishes Summit, Calls for Meeting With NATO

Warsaw Pact countries concluded their two-day summit today by calling for a meeting with NATO members by the end of the year to discuss military doctrines and “imbalances.”

Herbert Krolikovsky, East Germany’s deputy foreign minister, told reporters: “The Warsaw Pact states are prepared to convene consultations (with NATO) before the end of 1987 in either Brussels or Warsaw. This could tackle imbalances and ways of eliminating them.”

He said conventional forces could be cut back to levels necessary for each side’s defense, a position a Western diplomat said reflected the strongest recognition to date of a Warsaw Pact numerical advantage in troops and tanks over NATO.

The seven-nation Warsaw Pact--the Soviet Union, East Germany, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland and Czechoslovakia--is the Communist equivalent of NATO.

The Communist alliance also proposed East-West negotiations on battlefield nuclear weapons in Europe, Krolikovsky, said.

Concern over battlefield nuclear weapons has helped hold up a NATO response to Soviet arms control offers on removing medium- and shorter-range nuclear weapons from Europe.

This week, NATO defense ministers met in Brussels and vowed to increase spending on conventional forces by 3% a year. Krolikovsky challenged the decision, saying “This is not the time to build up conventional troops.”