Geneva Talks at Crucial Stage, Soviet Negotiator Says

Chief Soviet arms negotiator Yuli M. Vorontsov said Saturday that superpower talks on slashing nuclear missile arsenals had reached a crucial stage.

“It’s a very important round,” Vorontsov told reporters after arriving here from Moscow to take charge of his negotiating team.

Asked if he had a Soviet response to a U.S. call for the scrapping of all shorter-range missiles, or a long-awaited draft treaty on strategic arms, Vorontsov said: “Well, you’ll see it later on.”

Chief U.S. negotiator Max M. Kampelman arrived on Wednesday to assess progress in three separate sets of talks with the Soviet Union on long-range nuclear missiles, intermediate-range missiles and space weapons.

The chief negotiators agreed at the start of the round to return to Geneva whenever their teams needed a push to keep up momentum. They are expected to stay about 10 days.

Working Lunch

Kampelman had a working lunch on Friday with deputy Soviet delegation leader Alexei A. Obukhov and will begin work with Vorontsov early next week, spokesmen for both sides said.

The superpowers have described the current round of talks, which opened April 23, as an open-ended make-or-break effort to strike the first major arms control deal in nearly a decade.

Both sides agree that time is running out for an arms deal under the Reagan Administration. Little progress is deemed likely once the campaign for the U.S. presidential election starts in earnest early next year.

Since opening this round, the superpowers have drafted the first version of a joint treaty calling for elimination of all their Euromissiles. This is the area where negotiations are most advanced and most likely to produce an accord.

These medium-range weapons include 270 triple-warhead Soviet SS-20 rockets and 316 U.S. single-warhead cruise and Pershing 2 missiles--all targeted on European territory.

The Administration raised the stakes at the talks earlier this week by proposing that the “Euromissile” draft also include a world-wide ban on all shorter-range missiles.

Ranges of Missiles

Shorter-range missiles have a range of between 300 and 1,000 miles, compared with 1,000-3,000 miles for medium-range weapons.

The Soviet Union, whose negotiating position in Geneva has covered only European shorter-range missiles, has about 120 shorter-range launchers, each with six single-warhead rockets. It agreed to scrap those in Europe, about 80, but wants to keep 40 in Asia. The United States has no shorter-range missiles.

Official spokesmen in the superpower capitals have begun to speak of a possible summit in Washington later this year to sign a pact on the medium- and shorter-range missiles.

However, the negotiators in Geneva say there are still a number of fundamental differences that will require tough political sacrifices by one or both sides to resolve. These include the question of where a remaining 100 medium-range warheads that each side may keep outside Europe can be deployed, and measures to guard against cheating.

Meanwhile, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze was quoted as saying in Belgrade on Saturday that the Soviet Union is ready to remove ships bearing nuclear missiles from the Mediterranean region.

Shevardnadze, in Belgrade for talks with Yugoslav officials, was quoted by the official Yugoslav news agency Tanjug as saying that the region should be included in disarmament talks in Europe. Tanjug did not elaborate.