U.S. and Soviets Criticized on Arms Control Violations

The Reagan Administration exaggerates or distorts allegations of Soviet nuclear weapons violations and uses Soviet non-compliance to discredit the process of arms control, a study released Sunday by the Union of Concerned Scientists said.

The study also said the Soviets clearly have deliberately violated the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty with their giant radar station at Krasnoyarsk in Soviet Central Asia, but two other key U.S. complaints against the Soviets are either magnified for political reasons or are technically unjustified.

The group’s report said the United States appears to be in violation of the ABM treaty with its early tests for the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as “Star Wars,” and with two new U.S. air defense radars at Thule, Greenland, and Fylingdales Moor, England.

The report said the Reagan Administration has tried to make political hay out of the alleged Soviet violations rather than to resolve them in a confidential forum in Geneva that was set up handle such charges.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, describing itself as a public policy organization, says it has more than 100,000 members.

Its report said the Administration “has made the resolution of these issues far more difficult by making exaggerated, public allegations” and ignoring the established means of dealing with them.

“This approach suggests that the Administration regards the question of Soviet non-compliance as an asset to be exploited--to justify its own military programs and to discredit arms controls--rather than as a problem to be solved.”

The Krasnoyarsk radar, said the report, is a major Soviet violation because it suggests that the Soviet Union made the decision to violate the ABM treaty even before the treaty was signed. The Soviet explanation that the radar installation is only a satellite-tracking station does not make sense, and the radar is clearly meant to complete the circle of stations meant to track incoming missiles, the report said.

Other U.S. allegations against the Soviets are less clear, the report said.

One, in which the United States says the new Soviet SS-25 mobile missile is a violation of the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, is probably not justified because the U.S. negotiators in the 1972 treaty ignored a loophole.

The Soviets claim the development of the SS-25 is permitted because it is a modification of the earlier SS-13 missile, a weapon U.S. negotiators ignored because it appeared to be a failure.