Meeting on Long-Range Arms Seen as Crucial : Shultz’s Moscow Visit Called ‘Make-or-Break’ Opportunity for Strategic Pact

Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s trip to Moscow this week is shaping up as a crucial--some say “make-or-break”--meeting on a new agreement to reduce long-range offensive nuclear arms in the final year of the Reagan Administration, according to U.S. officials.

Accompanied by Frank C. Carlucci, the President’s national security adviser, Shultz will also try to set a date for a U.S. visit by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to sign a treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

Such a treaty, nearing completion in arms negotiations in Geneva, would be modest compared with an agreement to curb the gigantic long-range missiles the two sides are prepared to hurl at each other.

Strategic missiles have a range of at least 3,000 miles and are capable of striking targets anywhere in the United States or the Soviet Union from U.S. and Soviet launch sites. Intermediate-range missiles are designed to strike targets between 300 miles and 3,000 miles from launch sites.

The superpowers have agreed in principle to cut their offensive arsenals in half, to a ceiling on each side of 1,600 delivery systems (missiles and bombers) and 6,000 warheads on those systems. And Gorbachev has said a treaty can be signed in the first half of 1988.

2 Breakthroughs Required

But two breakthroughs, requiring political decisions at the highest level, are needed before Gorbachev’s timetable can be achieved. They involve:

-- Soviet demands for limits on President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, the space-based missile-defense system commonly known as “Star Wars.” The Kremlin has long demanded constraints on SDI as a condition for deep cuts in offensive nuclear weapons, but it recently appears to have eased away somewhat from linkage.

“If Soviet concerns are to achieve predictability (in U.S. anti-missile efforts), we can do business,” a senior White House official said in an interview. “But if they are still out to stop SDI, then we can’t.”

-- U.S. demands for limits on Soviet missiles, the number and accuracy of which create the capability for a surprise attack. The United States has proposed a limit of 4,800 ballistic missile warheads of all kinds, with a maximum of 3,300 on land-based missiles.

“If Shultz can get Soviet acceptance of the 4,800 number in Moscow, he will be prepared to make concessions on other things,” a senior Administration official said.

Starting with the visit here last month by Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the Soviets have shown new flexibility on both issues. But opinion is divided on whether they are ready to go far enough.

The consensus in the United States is that while the Soviets are prepared to move ahead faster toward an offensive weapons agreement without parallel advances in the missile defense negotiations, they are reserving the option of stopping short of actually signing an agreement in the absence of limits on SDI.

Some State Department officials are more optimistic. They believe the Soviets will “climb off” the linkage--deep cuts in offensive weapons only in combination with constraints on SDI--when Shultz gets to Moscow. But several senior Administration officials doubt that the Soviets will give up their effort to restrain SDI.

The recent Soviet flexibility, they note, could be a tactical move, designed less to reach a new accord on offensive weapons than to ensure congressional ratification of the expected treaty banning medium-range missiles. For Congress, the prospect of a 50% cut in long-range offensive weapons will be a major impetus to approve the medium-range accord.

Congressional rejection of that agreement would be nearly disastrous for the arms control process and for U.S.-Soviet relations. Gorbachev’s position within the Kremlin would suffer a major blow, according to State Department analysts. More important, perhaps, disillusioned North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies of the United States might push for withdrawing medium-range U.S. missiles from their territory even without a treaty formally committing the Soviets to elimination of their medium- range missiles from Europe.

By and large, however, top U.S. officials believe the Soviets sincerely want a long-range weapons accord--dubbed START, for strategic arms reduction talks--with the Reagan Administration.

“They have told us they want to deal with a conservative Administration now rather than wait for the next one,” the senior White House official said.

To exploit the perceived opening in the space defense negotiations, the Administration has put together a “predictability package” that would allow work on SDI to continue but would rule out deploying an anti-missile shield in space for seven years, one State Department official said.

The package would allow each side to observe the other’s research efforts and tests of anti-missile devices. In addition, it would establish an annual information exchange that would describe work planned for the next year.

But this scheme would mean in effect that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which forbids deployment of a nationwide missile defense, would end in 1994, when the United States would be free to deploy an anti-missile system.

The Soviets, by contrast, seek to preserve the ABM treaty and have sought a 10-year no-deployment promise.

Shevardnadze last month brought a curious new proposal on what would be permitted during the 10-year period. Either both sides could abide by the ABM treaty “as signed and ratified in 1972,” or they could negotiate a list of devices that could be tested in space at reduced strength and size. This was the first time the Soviets had suggested allowing the test in space of a potential anti-missile device.

Neither of the alternatives is acceptable to the Administration, however. The first is regarded as too ambiguous, given the vastly different interpretations, even in the United States, of what was “signed and ratified” in the ABM treaty. The Administration believes the treaty permits everything short of deployment, while the Soviets and congressional Democrats who oppose SDI believe that it allows only limited research.

As for the second alternative, Reagan argues that to negotiate a list of permitted devices would be to impose curbs on SDI, which he adamantly opposes.

By offering to settle for reaffirming the ABM treaty, however, the new Soviet plan includes one possible avenue of compromise. U.S. officials said a simple clause in a new START agreement--wholly separate from the negotiations on space defense weapons--might link weapons reductions to continued compliance with the ABM treaty.

In fact, the Soviets have already proposed such a clause. It states that both sides would be released from any agreement on long-range offensive weapons if there was a “material breach” of the ABM treaty.

Some senior Pentagon officials would accept such a solution, arguing that every agreement has an escape clause anyway. But senior State Department officials would oppose it, noting that each side has already accused the other of violating the ABM treaty.

“This would make START reductions hostages to Soviet accusations,” one objected.

Whatever happens on the defense issue, the Soviets have clearly signaled that they are preparing to move ahead at a faster pace toward an offensive weapons agreement.

While the two sides have already agreed in principle to cut their offensive nuclear weapons by about half, the two sides disagree on how to apportion the remaining 6,000 warheads and bombs among the so-called “triad” of delivery systems: land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and bombers.

The United States has proposed a series of sub-limits. Of the 6,000 total, a maximum of 4,800 warheads could be put on land-based and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Of the 4,800, no more than 3,300 warheads could go on land, and no more than 1,650 warheads could be included on “heavy” ICBMs that carry seven or more warheads each.

The aim is to curb the huge Soviet force of accurate, quick-launching ICBMs that have the potential for a surprise attack.

The Soviets seem ready to accept that result--they propose a limit of 3,600 on ICBMs. But they reject the ceiling of 4,800 on land-based and submarine-based ballistic missiles combined. That ceiling would mean that 1,200 bombs would be permitted, and to carry them, the Soviets would need more than twice the number of bombers they now have.

“The U.S. proposal would require us to revamp our strategic forces,” complained Sergei Chuvakhin, a counselor at the Soviet Embassy here.

Moscow has advanced its own proposal. No segment of either side’s arsenal--land-based, submarine-launched or air-based--could represent more than 60% of the allowable 6,000 nuclear charges. This would limit the U.S. submarine force, by far the largest of the three, to 3,600 warheads.

Such an outcome is opposed not only by the U.S. Navy but also by liberal arms control champions, who believe that submarine-launched missiles deter surprise attacks by the other side because they are less vulnerable to being knocked out in a first strike.

Nevertheless, the differences on the formula for reducing long-range missiles are less severe than in the anti-missile defense arena, and U.S. officials are optimistic that Shultz can make some progress in Moscow.

“The evidence of recent months,” a senior State Department official said, “is that we can do business with the Soviets in this area.”