Shultz, Shevardnadze to Meet Monday on Summit Agenda

Secretary of State George P. Shultz will meet with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze in Geneva on Monday and Tuesday and will brief North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies Wednesday in a trip hastily scheduled to discuss the summit agenda, an Administration official said Thursday.

At the same time, U.S. officials complained that, while Soviet negotiators have provided more detailed missile data than before, it still is not enough to complete the new intermediate-range missile treaty.

In addition, a senior U.S. official said that although Moscow has agreed to allow U.S. on-site inspectors to monitor a Soviet ballistic missile facility, the Soviets would not be given the comparable access that they have sought to a cruise missile production plant at San Diego. Access to some other facility will be offered instead, he said.

Nevertheless, hints of a new Shultz-Shevardnadze meeting emerged during the day after State Department spokesman Charles Redman declined to repeat previous assurances that there are “no plans” for another meeting of the foreign ministers in preparation for a summit conference between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Shevardnadze visited Washington in September, meeting Shultz and Reagan; then Shultz traveled to Moscow in late October, and Shevardnadze returned to Washington a week later. After those meetings, the summit session was scheduled for Dec. 7 to 10.

Four Principal Topics

Since then, U.S. and Soviet officials have met to discuss the four key summit topics: arms control; regional issues, such as the conflicts in Afghanistan and Nicaragua; human rights, including Jewish emigration, and bilateral U.S.-Soviet concerns.

Shultz and Shevardnadze agreed to meet again after they had reviewed the results of those individual sessions, including the arms control meetings between Ambassador Max M. Kampelman and Soviet chief negotiator Yuli M. Vorontsov in Geneva last weekend.

U.S. officials emphasized that the intermediate-range arms agreement--which would ban all ground-launched missiles with ranges between 300 and 3,000 miles--is not in trouble, despite the remaining problems. However, several important problems remain before the intermediate-range missile treaty can be completed.

“We have only some of the required data” on the number of different types of Soviet missiles and their location, Redman told reporters. “The Soviets have not turned over everything that’s required . . . in the very near future in order to assess its accuracy and completeness.”

A senior official said that Soviet negotiators, after failing to deliver several times, have finally disclosed their combined total of SS-20 and SS-4 missiles (whose ranges are between 600 and 3,000 miles), including those deployed and those in storage. They have also disclosed the combined total of SS-12/22 and SS-23 missiles (whose range is between 300 and 600 miles), deployed and not deployed.

In both cases, the large number of undeployed Soviet missiles surprised U.S. officials. Although precise numbers could not be learned, it appears that the Soviets possess six to eight times more of the shorter-range SS-12/22 and SS-23 missiles than the roughly 130 now deployed in launchers and perhaps twice as many of the longer-range SS-20 and SS-4 missiles than the roughly 550 currently deployed.

The United States, for its part, will eliminate more than 500 missiles, including 284 ground-launched cruise missiles and 108 Pershing 2 ballistic missiles that have been deployed in Europe.

But without a more detailed breakdown of the Soviet weapons--and particularly without the locations of the missiles--U.S. officials will be unable to decide precisely what kind of verification measures to insist upon in the treaty.

Why the Soviets have been dragging their feet on this point is not clear; nor is it certain that they will soon provide the data. One senior official said the Soviets intend to hand over the information only when the treaty is signed, but Redman said that “the Soviets continue to say that it will be forthcoming.”

Potentially more serious is the emerging dispute within the Administration over U.S. access to Soviet SS-25 intercontinental missiles whose size, production, shelter and launch facilities are difficult to distinguish from SS-20 medium-range missiles. Under current terms being negotiated, the SS-20s are to be banned but not the SS-25s.

Comparable Facility

The United States proposed that it monitor a final assembly plant where SS-20s and SS-25s have been produced and check on the deployment sites for SS-25s, where SS-20s may be hidden. In what could be a major breakthrough, the Soviets agreed to allow U.S. inspectors at the plant if Soviet inspectors could be posted at a comparable U.S. facility.

They also agreed to permit inspection visits to SS-25 sites where SS-20s previously had been based, although they refused to permit such visits to SS-25 sites built after the SS-20s are eliminated.

But key U.S. officials, including Kenneth L. Adelman, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, oppose allowing Soviets at the U.S. cruise missile facility that is, on the face of it, most comparable. The United States produces both sea-launched and ground-launched cruise missiles there. The naval version will continue to be legal, but the ground-launched version will be banned under the treaty.

Adelman and others apparently have convinced the White House that since U.S. inspectors will not have the right to visit Soviet cruise missile facilities--no Soviet cruise missiles are covered in the treaty--the Soviets should not visit U.S. cruise missile facilities.

Instead, the Soviets will be offerred inspection rights at the Pershing 2 production plant, which stopped making these ballistic missiles some time ago, or at a plant manufacturing launchers for the ground-launched cruise missiles.

Several other arms issues are also outstanding, including the rights of Soviet inspectors to visit U.S. facilities in NATO nations where U.S. medium-range missiles are now stationed. Most such “U.S. owned and operated” facilities are part of larger bases belonging to the military forces of Britain, West Germany, Belgium and Italy.