Soviets Pose New Obstacle to Accord : Destruction of Warheads on Bonn’s Missiles Demanded

The Soviet Union has raised a new and unexpected objection that could stall negotiations over a worldwide ban on intermediate-range nuclear weapons just when an agreement appears to be within reach, Secretary of State George P. Shultz and chief U.S. negotiator Max M. Kampelman said Friday.

The U.S. officials declined to speculate on Soviet motives for creating the obstacle--a demand that the United States destroy the warheads of West German missiles. But Kampelman said he remains optimistic that the two sides eventually will agree in their talks in Geneva on a treaty eliminating nuclear missiles with ranges of 300 to 3,000 miles.

“None of (the remaining issues) appears to me to be justifiably called tough,” Kampelman told a press conference.

Earlier in the day Friday, Shultz said in an interview with Reuters and the international television news agency Visnews that the United States is prepared to sign an intermediate nuclear forces pact but that “the Soviets keep adding new things . . . and the question is whether or not they want to move forward.”

The new Soviet objections came to light just as Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze are preparing to meet in Washington for key negotiations on a number of issues starting next Tuesday. That three-day meeting has been widely expected to clear the way for a summit conference later this fall between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Kampelman said that the Shultz-Shevardnadze meeting could easily settle all of the remaining issues if the Soviets are serious about wanting an agreement. But he said he is disappointed that the negotiators in Geneva have been unable to tie up the loose ends before the foreign ministers meeting.

However, the latest controversy may be intended to preserve the suspense for the Shultz-Shevardnadze meeting or to avoid raising expectations in case the session does not go well.

“We are well along on a joint draft treaty although we do not have it ready for this ministerial (meeting) as we had hoped to have,” Kampelman said.

And he added: “I’m not particularly disturbed about it.”

Soviet Demands

In the Geneva talks, the Soviet Union now has demanded that the United States destroy the U.S.-controlled nuclear warheads for 72 West German Pershing 1-A missiles that the Bonn government plans to scrap as soon as the U.S.-Soviet intermediate nuclear forces agreement takes effect. The United States says that the warheads will be withdrawn from West Germany but refuses to say what will happen to them.

Shultz and Kampelman said the Soviet demand is improper because the negotiations concern missile systems and not warheads. Moreover, Kampelman said, destruction of specific nuclear warheads would be “totally unverifiable.”

Kampelman added that the negotiators in Geneva “have not yet dotted the ‘i’s and crossed the ‘t’s on verification.”

In Bonn, Reuters news agency reported, Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir F. Petrovsky said it is the United States that is stalling in Geneva. He said considerable obstacles remained in the path of a missile deal, the greatest of them being the Pershing warheads.

“Our position has always been clear: Zero means zero--that is, no missiles and no warheads,” he said. This had always been the Soviet negotiating position at Geneva and the United States knew it, the minister added.

Still, Shultz said he remains optimistic that the problems can be worked out.

“I’ve logged lots of time with Mr. Gorbachev, and I’ve always had the feeling that they want something worked out,” he said. “That’s the basis on which I’m going to go (to meet Shevardnadze), and we’ll listen to what they have to say and try to find an answer to it.”

U.S. officials have been saying for several weeks that they expect Shultz and Shevardnadze to fix a date for the next Reagan-Gorbachev summit, at which the two leaders would sign a formal pact on intermediate-range nuclear arms.

Shultz and Shevardnadze plan to discuss the same four-point agenda that Washington wants to take up at the anticipated summit: arms control, human rights, regional issues and bilateral issues.

In preparation for the human rights section, Shultz met Friday with Natan Sharansky, the Soviet Jewish dissident who emigrated to Israel in 1986 after his release from a forced labor camp. Sharansky said that Shultz promised to make the Jewish issue “an integral part of all negotiations.”

A total of 4,574 Soviet Jews have been allowed to emigrate so far this year, well above last year’s total of 914 but far below the 51,000 who were allowed to leave in 1979. Sharansky estimated that up to 400,000 Jews want to leave the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, Rep. James H. Scheuer (D-N.Y.) said he had been informed that the Soviets had granted an exit visa to another noted Jewish activist, Lev Elbert, 38, and his family. Elbert has been seeking to leave since 1976.