Soviet Favors U.S. Plan for A-Monitoring

A top Soviet arms control official today offered for the first time to accept a U.S. proposal for monitoring nuclear tests, and even offered to let the United States explode its own bomb in the Soviet Union to calibrate monitoring equipment.

The chief U.S. negotiator to arms control talks in Geneva, Max M. Kampelman, immediately said the offer was worth pursuing.

Col. Gen. Nikolai Chervov of the Soviet Defense Ministry said through an interpreter in a luncheon speech that “the Soviet Union is prepared to accept any type of verification” on a test-ban agreement.

“There is no problem on verification,” Chervov said at a luncheon for visiting members of the Soviet delegation to last week’s conference on U.S.-Soviet relations at Chautauqua, N.Y.

Includes Cortex System

Chervov said his statement could include adoption of the Cortex test monitoring system that had earlier been proposed by the U.S. side. The system involves placing a detection device in a hole bored near the site of an atomic explosion.

“If you want to deploy the Cortex system, we would be prepared to consider that proposal on a mutually acceptable basis,” he said.

“If you want to calibrate the instruments, feel free to come to our test ranges with a nuclear device of your own, and explode it there to make sure that everything is all right,” he added.

Kampelman said it was the first time he had heard a Soviet official make such an offer. “This to me was a new thought, and I have to check that out,” Kampelman told reporters after the luncheon. “We’ll look at it.”

Chervov, who has been in charge of arms reduction issues for the Soviet military, has been a frequent courier of information from the Soviet Union to the Soviet negotiating team in Geneva, although he is not a member of the team.