NATO Seen ‘Within Reach’ of Accord on Euromissiles

Foreign ministers of the Atlantic Alliance are “within reach” of an agreement on a strategy for removing medium- and short-range nuclear missiles from Europe, NATO Secretary General Lord Carrington said Wednesday.

Speaking at a press conference on the eve of the annual spring meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization foreign ministers, Carrington warned, however, that the deep cuts in nuclear forces that are now considered almost certain will magnify the alliance’s failure, so far, to deal with the Soviet Union’s overwhelming advantage in chemical and conventional arms.

The British diplomat said the NATO foreign ministers are expected to endorse a U.S.-West German agreement on a joint alliance strategy for the U.S.-Soviet talks on elimination of the mid- and short-range nuclear weapons. Although much serious Washington-Moscow bargaining remains to be done, the elimination of NATO objections to the plan will remove one of the last major obstacles.

Reagan-Kohl Accord

President Reagan and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl reached their agreement during the seven-nation economic summit meeting in Venice.

“It is within reach that we get an agreement on the elimination of all or almost all LRINF (long-range intermediate nuclear force) and SRINF (short-range intermediate nuclear force) missiles,” Carrington said.

But the secretary general said the proposed pact could increase the danger to NATO unless the alliance does something to narrow the advantage of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact in tanks, other conventional arms and war gases, a task which he admitted has proved to be dismayingly difficult.

“The prospect of deep reductions in nuclear arsenals also increases the need to get rid of the imbalance in chemical weapons and conventional weapons which are very much in the Warsaw Pact’s favor,” he said.

New Round of Talks

NATO foreign ministers decided at their spring meeting last year in Halifax, Canada, to press for a new round of conventional arms reduction talks to replace the moribund mutual and balanced force reduction talks in Vienna that have plodded along without results for 17 years.

“I don’t think in Halifax everyone realized just how difficult conventional disarmament is,” Carrington said, adding, “I had very much hoped that we would have gotten on quicker than we have.”

The allies have been unable to agree among themselves on a joint strategy for conventional arms control. Even if that hurdle can be overcome, talks with the Soviets would almost certainly be very difficult.

Some European members of NATO believe that Moscow’s objective in considering deep cuts in nuclear forces in Europe is to remove a restraint on the possible Soviet exploitation of its advantage in conventional weaponry.