Bonn Offer Puts Arms Pact in Reach: Reagan : Kohl Bows to Soviets, Would Scrap Missiles

In a move that President Reagan said clears an “artificial obstacle” to a U.S.-Soviet arms pact, West Germany pledged Wednesday to scrap 72 nuclear missiles on its soil if the two superpowers agree in Geneva to a global ban on their short- and medium-range missiles.

Speaking to 1,700 civic leaders at a Town Hall of California banquet in Los Angeles, Reagan said that quick agreement now is within reach if the Soviets respond “constructively rather than erect additional barriers to agreement.”

“We are therefore hopeful that the Soviet Union will demonstrate that there is substance behind the rhetoric they have repeated so often” favoring arms control, he said.

The Soviets began insisting this year that the 72 Pershing 1-A missiles be removed from Germany before they will sign the arms-reduction accord.

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said in Bonn that he made the offer, after two days of discussions with the White House, because “time is running out” on the three-year-long Geneva arms talks with the approaching U.S. presidential campaign.

“I want to do all (I can) to help the United States conclude a successful agreement,” Kohl said, “. . . because next year there won’t be any chance.”

The United States had publicly refused to ask Germany to scrap the Pershings, calling the move a domestic military decision unrelated to the U.S.-Soviet arms negotiations.

‘Absolutely No Pressure’

A senior White House official, speaking on condition that he not be named, repeated in Los Angeles on Wednesday that Kohl was under “absolutely no pressure” to make the offer.

But now that the offer has been made, the official said, “things can move very fast” if the Soviets respond positively.

Reagan’s remarks at the Century Plaza Hotel, broadcast live to a conference of U.S. and Soviet leaders in Chautauqua, N.Y., were part of a sternly worded speech urging the Soviets to show good will by making significant reforms in their system.

On Wednesday, the Soviet news agency Tass termed Kohl’s offer an effort to “shift the blame” for slow progress on arms control from Washington to Moscow. However, the move represents the West’s second concession this week in the long-running Geneva talks, and it appears to remove the last major Soviet objection to an agreement on European missiles.

The United States on Tuesday offered to simplify the means by which the two superpowers verify that each is complying with an arms accord.

The secrecy-minded Soviets--as well as U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization military officials--had balked at inspection measures that they believed would allow their foes to spy on sensitive defense installations.

Kohl’s offer would satisfy a second Kremlin objection: that the West was retaining an ability to strike some Soviet targets from Europe as the Soviets were surrendering the ability to strike back.

The West German offer would end plans to modernize the 72 aging Pershings by 1992 and instead would scrap the missiles if the Americans and Soviets reach a verifiable arms-reduction pact.

The two superpowers tentatively have agreed in Geneva to dismantle all intermediate missiles, with ranges of 300 to 3,000 miles.

The Pershings, with a range of about 460 miles, are at the low end of the intermediate class. The West Germans own the missiles, and the United States controls their nuclear warheads.

In a statement released in Bonn, Kohl said that he “expects from the Soviet Union and its partners a constructive answer to our offer.”

He also urged the Soviet Union’s East European allies to abandon plans to modernize their own short-range nuclear missile forces, but did not make that a condition of his pledge.

The senior White House official, while welcoming Kohl’s offer Wednesday, noted that Germany’s NATO allies still must be consulted on the proposal.

“This (offer) doesn’t mean that there isn’t some negotiating to go on,” he said. “There will clearly be issues that have to be resolved” between the superpowers.

But “if they agree with our position, it shouldn’t take very much time at all” to agree to final terms in Geneva.

In his Los Angeles speech, Reagan also called on the Soviet Union to open its national defenses to public scrutiny and debate, saying that would lessen mistrust of Kremlin military intentions.

The President acknowledged what he called hopeful signs of change within the Soviet Union under Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, or openness.

Reagan said, however, that the Soviets so far have failed to back up their stated good intentions toward the West with action to ease world tensions.

“While talking about reforms at home, the Soviet Union has stepped up its efforts to impose a failed system on others,” Reagan said, citing increased military activity in Afghanistan and what he said has been a doubling of arms shipments to Central America.

Reagan said that the Soviet actions are viewed “with the utmost concern” and that only “significant democratic steps” will lead to a basic change in the U.S.-Soviet relationship.

The steps, which the President has listed in the past, include tearing down the Berlin Wall, removing 115,000 troops from Afghanistan and allowing East European nations a measure of self-determination.

On Wednesday, the President added to the list a call for more glasnost in the Soviet military, saying that the Soviets should reveal their true defense budget and the size and composition of their military.

He also urged a public debate on military policy in the Supreme Soviet, the Soviet Union’s nominal Parliament, similar to annual debates on the Pentagon budget in the U.S. Congress.

Such moves would signal that the Soviets’ new openness is more than a propaganda ploy, Reagan said.

The President’s address, a reaffirmation of U.S. foreign policy, was filled with contrasts between the American “crusade for freedom” and darker episodes in Soviet history, from the breakdown of the Yalta agreement among the World War II victors in 1945 to the current problems in Afghanistan.

In a clear reference to the Soviets, Reagan said that the twin goals of United States policy are “to dispel rather than live with the two great darkening clouds of the postwar era: the danger of nuclear holocaust and the expansion of totalitarian rule.”

Under his Administration, Reagan said, the United States seeks to “break the deadlock” on those issues and to press the American causes of peace and freedom against Soviet opposition.

Yet Reagan never directly called the Soviet system totalitarian, and he spoke often of “hopeful” changes under Gorbachev.

“In the Soviet Union itself, we see movement towards more openness, possibly even progress towards respect for human rights and economic reform,” he said at one point.

If the Soviets still fall far short of democratic standards, he said, “the opportunity before us is too great to let pass by.” He said that the United States has tried to prod the Soviets toward further reform by setting “guideposts,” such as the removal of the Berlin Wall, which would signal Soviet interest in better relations.

However, the President gave no ground on any of the U.S. policies that have most angered the Soviets.

He defended his Strategic Defense Initiative, which would erect a space-based defense against nuclear missiles, as “the right decision at the right time.” The Soviets have demanded an end to the program as a condition for any agreement to reduce long-range nuclear missiles.

Reagan cast the U.S. policy of aiding rebels in Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan as a crusade against totalitarian oppression.

His address was a prelude to a broader foreign affairs speech scheduled to be delivered at the United Nations next month.