Soviets Warm to W. German Missile Offer

A Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman on Thursday welcomed a conditional West German offer to scrap 72 Pershing 1-A missiles as a “change for the better” in prospects for a Soviet-American treaty to abolish all intermediate- and shorter-range nuclear missiles.

Spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov said that U.S. willingness to destroy its 72 warheads for these Pershing missiles would take away the last major obstacle to an agreement.

He also indicated that the question of a Soviet-American summit may be decided at a mid-September meeting between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

U.S. and Soviet diplomats working in Geneva will discuss regional conflicts and bilateral relations and report their findings to Shultz and Shevardnadze so that they can be taken into account during their Sept. 15-17 meeting, he said.

But he criticized Wednesday’s foreign policy speech by President Reagan in Los Angeles, saying it was like a “very cold shower” at a delicate stage of negotiations.

He accused the President of bringing out “the old baggage of anti-Soviet rhetoric,” using a “primitive approach” to superpower relations.

Gerasimov clarified the Kremlin’s position on the offer by Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany to get rid of the Pershing 1-A missiles if the Soviet Union and the United States agree to the so-called “global double zero” plan for abolition of all intermediate nuclear forces.

At first, Soviet reports on Kohl’s statement gave no clear signal on the Kremlin’s attitude toward the unexpected West German proposal. While some accounts had guarded praise for the new development, others emphasized that it was hedged with too many conditions.

Plan ‘Carefully Studied’

Gerasimov said, however, that the Kohl plan was received “with interest” by Moscow and was being “carefully studied” by arms control specialists.

“Of course, the situation has changed for the better,” he said when asked about the impact of Kohl’s statement on the effort to get a treaty to eliminate two classes of missiles within the intermediate nuclear forces category.

In the past, the United States has said it would not discuss the Pershing 1-A’s and their American-controlled warheads on grounds that they constituted a third-country weapons system not covered by the Geneva bargaining.

Western diplomats, however, said that Kohl’s offer to junk the missiles rather than block agreement on abolition of medium-range and shorter-range missiles would give Washington a face-saving way out of the impasse.

Conditions Examined

Gerasimov said the Soviet Union is studying the conditions mentioned by Kohl and noted that Reagan did not offer to destroy the U.S. warheads for the Pershing 1-A’s during his speech to the Town Hall of California.

Even if that issue is resolved, Gerasimov said, there are other disputes over the phasing of destruction for both sides and verification measures.

“But we think all these problems can be solved by diplomats,” Gerasimov added in one of his more upbeat appraisals of the Soviet-American negotiations at Geneva.

U.S. Proposal Welcomed

He also welcomed a new American proposal on verification measures for a missile-destruction treaty.

“This is a simplified proposal compared to the earlier one,” he said. “we see no problem in this respect.”

Gerasimov also denied a news report, by the British Broadcasting Corp., that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev will go to the United Nations next month and then travel to Latin America.

“There is no basis for this report whatsoever,” Gerasimov said.