Delighted With Missile Treaty, Allies Tell Shultz

Secretary of State George P. Shultz won the enthusiastic endorsement Wednesday of the NATO alliance for the just-completed U.S.-Soviet missile accord that would eliminate all ground-launched nuclear missiles with a range between 300 and 3,000 miles. Most of the deployed weapons in this category are in Europe.

Shultz said the Western allies will stop deploying U.S. cruise missiles in Europe when the treaty is signed in Washington next month, without waiting for Senate ratification.

“When the treaty is finally signed on Dec. 10, at that point whatever exists at that stage stays in place, but there is no further work and there are no further deployments,” Shultz told a news conference after a two-hour special session of foreign ministers and ambassadors of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization during a stop here on his way back to Washington.

Money-Saving Move

He said this means the alliance would forgo deployment of about 220 cruise missiles in Britain, West Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands, adding that the halt in deployments will save money at a time of budget-cutting.

He estimated that the development, production, deployment and eventual withdrawal of the U.S. Pershing 2 and ground-launched cruise missiles to match the Soviet medium-range missile buildup of the last decade will have cost $7 billion to $9 billion by 1990, when the elimination of the missiles is scheduled to be completed.

At his news conference, Shultz said all members of the alliance were “delighted with the treaty and said so in the meeting.”

He referred to the missile agreement reached in Geneva as an alliance treaty that came out of NATO’s 1979 decision both to deploy new missiles to match the Soviet buildup and to negotiate to eliminate those weapons on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

“This isn’t a U.S. treaty. This is their treaty, this is an alliance treaty,” Shultz said. “The alliance carried it through and was steadfast and cohesive and now we have the result that we sought.

“There was an absolutely full uniform sense of support” for the agreement, Shultz added, crediting NATO cohesion and steadfastness for the success in the U.S.-Soviet negotiations.

Other allied officials here expressed similar views and said they hope the Senate will ratify the treaty.

“This is a treaty that we feel is our treaty, an alliance treaty, not just one between the United States and the Soviet Union,” said Giulio Andreotti, Italy’s foreign minister. “We offered a prayer for (Senate) ratification.”

West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, speaking to reporters, hailed the agreement as an important milestone. Speaking of the treaty’s opponents in the Senate, Genscher said: “Critics of the treaty in the United States have no right to use West Germany as the reason for their criticism.”

A senior British diplomat commented: “The Americans got out of it a heavily asymmetric agreement, one could say a ground-breaking agreement. It is very striking what the Russians have conceded.”

A communique after Shultz’s meeting with the NATO Council here said that “the council enthusiastically welcomed the INF agreement and looked forward to its signature and early ratification.” INF stands for Intermediate Nuclear Forces, as the class of medium-range missiles is called.

The communique also expressed “full support around the council table for the President’s (Reagan) efforts and high expectations for progress” at the Washington summit two weeks from now.

Soviet inspection of missile facilities on the territory of five NATO nations--West Germany, Britain, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands--would be “done in full accord with the sovereignty and the laws of those countries,” Shultz assured Europeans in a press conference after the NATO session.

The Soviet Union and each of the countries will exchange notes laying out the rights and limits of the inspectors to visit U.S.-owned and operated facilities there for the entire 13-year life of the treaty.

No Springboard Seen

En route here from Geneva, where he met for two days with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, Shultz appeared to take quiet pride in the achievement of the missile agreement. But he declined to picture it as a springboard to an improved political climate between the superpowers, as Shevardnadze had done a day earlier.

“Things are moving in a constructive direction,” Shultz said, adding that there had been “more of a climax when Shevardnadze visited Washington (late last month) and we finally agreed in principle to complete the treaty.

“The way to manage the (U.S.-Soviet) relationship” he said, “is to stay away from euphoria and stay away from depression, just work at it in a steady way.”

Shultz confirmed that one of the two U.S. sites that Soviet inspectors would visit under the treaty is the General Dynamics facility at San Diego, where the launchers for ground-launched cruise missiles are built. Those cruise missiles and their associated equipment will be banned under the treaty, and the intermittent on-site inspection of the San Diego facility will be intended to verify that launcher production has halted.

At the other U.S. facility, in Utah, Soviet inspectors would be permanently stationed outside to monitor its production for the 13 years of the treaty. Shultz said the plant produces both components for the Pershing 2 ballistic missile, which the treaty will ban, and components for the MX intercontinental ballistic missile which will not be banned.

But senior officials traveling with Shultz contradicted the secretary on one of these points. They said the plant, owned by the Hercules Co., and located in Magna, Utah, once produced rocket motors for the obsolete Pershing 1-A rather than the Pershing 2.

(The Times erroneously reported Wednesday that the second plant to be inspected would probably be a Martin Marietta Corp. facility in Orlando, Fla., or possibly another facility in Colorado.)

Comparable Soviet Plant

The Utah plant is comparable to a Soviet facility at Votkinsk in the Ural Mountains that turns out both the SS-20 medium-range missiles, which are to be banned, and the SS-25 intercontinental missiles, which are not affected.

Shultz also told reporters on his plane that he is not concerned at the more than 10% discrepancy in Soviet data on missiles to be eliminated. As he explained it, the Soviets provided a grand total of missiles to be eliminated--reported by other officials to be about 2,000--which is about 250 more than the sum of the number of missiles of each type involved that would be banned under the treaty.

“The details are gradually being filled in,” he said, with the Soviets promising final figures by today. “So I don’t consider it a problem at all.”

Another U.S. official said the Soviet negotiators appeared deeply embarrassed by the discrepancy, which suggests a loose system of accounting for nuclear weapons by the Soviet general staff.

In describing the current state of Soviet-supplied data, a U.S. official said the 2,000 Soviet missiles are divided about equally between those of longer-range (SS-20s and SS-4s, of 600- to 3,000-mile range) and the shorter-range (SS-12/22s and SS-23s, of 300- to 600-mile range).

In Storage or Elsewhere

All data on the shorter-range weapons has been provided, the official said, but 200 to 250 of the longer-range weapons have not been accounted for in detail. These missiles are not deployed, but are are in storage or elsewhere.

The Soviets, some of whose missiles have three warheads each, have told U.S. officials that they have a total of over 3,000 warheads on the 2,000 missiles to be eliminated. The comparable figures for U.S. weapons are about 800 missiles and 800 warheads, the official said.

Frank C. Carlucci, the President’s national security adviser until he became defense secretary last week, has twice said recently that the Soviets will eliminate six times more warheads than the United States. But the State Department official said Carlucci had probably been confused.