Bonn to Dismantle Missiles Early : World’s Leaders Hail U.S.-Soviet Agreement

The West German government, along with others in Europe and around the world, welcomed Friday’s announcement in Washington that the United States and the Soviet Union had reached agreement in principle on eliminating mid-range nuclear missiles.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl expressed “deep satisfaction on this negotiation breakthrough,” according to his spokesman, Friedhelm Ost, and “congratulated the U.S. and the Soviet Union on this success.”

The agreement “clears the way for further steps in disarmament and arms control,” Ost quoted Kohl as saying, and could also signal a beginning to negotiations on introducing a “gradual” nuclear test ban.

Kohl, who offered last month to scrap 72 German-owned Pershing 1-A missiles with American nuclear warheads that had become a sticking point for the Soviets, said that West Germany “had a decisive part in this first great achievement of disarmament.” In part because of Kohl’s offer, the Soviet Union did not insist on making the Pershings an issue in the general agreement negotiated by Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

Bonn’s Pershings

The government in Bonn announced that it would dismantle the Pershings ahead of schedule, as a result of the U.S.-Soviet accord. Ost said the missiles will no longer exist by the time other U.S. and Soviet missiles are removed.

In Brussels, a spokesman for the 16-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization hailed the prospective treaty, which would dismantle all Soviet and American nuclear missiles with a range of 300 to 3,000 miles.

“We have been trying for a long time to reach an agreement,” the spokesman said, “and we hope that the agreement will be the beginning of a process in which we can live at a much lower level of armaments with the same security.”

NATO Secretary General Lord Carrington, speaking in London, said he welcomed the agreement but “with caution.”

“We can’t get carried way with euphoria,” he said. “Remember, the Soviet Union still has an enormous military capacity.”

A Sense of Caution

In Britain, the agreement was warmly welcomed, but with that same sense of caution about excessive expectations.

Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe called the agreement “a formidable achievement” but warned that it marked only a small beginning of a larger arms reduction process.

“It’s a good start, but we’re not euphoric,” he said. “It’s the beginning of the beginning.

“The more headway we make in getting nuclear weapons coming down,” Howe added, “the more important it becomes to begin achieving arms controls deals on conventional weapons as well.”

“This agreement can lead to the greatest disarmament achievement of our age,” said Labor leader Neil Kinnock, whose call for unilateral disarmament of Britain’s 64 Polaris nuclear missiles was viewed as a prime reason for his election defeat last June.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government has long advocated a tough stance on arms control and she is likely to claim Friday’s announcement as vindication for her position.

Protesters in Britain

Britain was the first NATO country where medium-range cruise missiles were deployed nearly four years ago. At the time, thousands of protesters gathered at the U.S. military base at Greenham Common, 60 miles west of London, to demonstrate against the arrival of the missiles.

In Belgium, Prime Minister Wilfried Martens said his government would cancel plans to accept another 32 U.S. cruise missiles as soon as the superpower arms agreement is signed--without waiting for treaty ratification by the U.S. Congress. Martens said the 16 cruise missiles already deployed in Belgium would be removed under a timetable worked out by NATO.

In Copenhagen, Danish Foreign Minister Uffe Ullemann-Jensen, declared: “This is the first time in the history of disarmament that there is agreement on total removal of a whole category of weapons and not just a ceiling on weapon numbers.”

Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson called news of the pact “tremendously gratifying,” but said it was “only a first step.”

‘People Will Be Relieved’

In The Hague, Dutch Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek said that “not only in the Netherlands, but everywhere people will be relieved that agreement has been reached.”

The French government, which even before the announcement of an agreement had remained aloof from the arms control talks in Geneva, had a more restrained reaction.

“These negotiations, in which we have not taken part . . . will, it seems, permit a reduction in the number of intermediate-range missiles in Europe,” French Premier Jacques Chirac said in Bordeaux. “So much the better, but I do not want us to move toward the illusion that an important step has been taken in security matters.

“What is important is to reduce the large central arsenals that threaten the world,” he added. Calling on the superpowers to cut their long-range missile stocks, he said France would press ahead with efforts to strengthen and modernize its own nuclear deterrent.

France’s nuclear arsenal, like Britain’s, is not subject to the U.S.-Soviet agreement.

Conventional Weapons

Chirac also said further disarmament talks are needed to reduce the Warsaw Pact’s superiority in conventional weapons.

Most Western leaders expressed the same hope that the U.S. and the Soviet Union could work out an agreement in reducing the size of the rest of the nuclear arsenal as well as their conventional armaments.

As former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt put it in a Stockholm lecture Friday, “Those who tell us this agreement will affect only a small part of the nuclear destruction potential fail to recognize the fundamental importance of events to come.”

Brandt said the next step in disarmament should be to establish new defense systems that could stop any attacks by aggressors, declaring, “This could be tantamount to a partial demilitarization of the East-West conflict, which might inaugurate a new chapter in European history.”

U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar issued a statement welcoming the pact and added that he was “most gratified that the two powers had agreed on procedures for further negotiations on a complete nuclear test ban and on the reduction of their strategic nuclear weapons.

Impact on Other Forums

Friday’s announcement could encourage negotiations taking place in the 40-nation Geneva Conference on Disarmament and could have a positive impact on discussions on a whole range of important disarmament issues in the U.N. General Assembly, the statement said.

Times London bureau chief Tyler Marshall contributed to this article.