Stored Missile Parts Will Alter List in Treaty, U.S. Tells Soviets

The United States, correcting what it described as an inadvertent omission, has informed the Soviet Union that 16 defective missile parts had been overlooked in a list of U.S. weapons to be destroyed under the new U.S.-Soviet treaty, the State Department said on Thursday.

The missile parts, which belong to the Pershing 1-A, have been stored for about a decade at the East Texas plant where they were manufactured, spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley said. The plant has since ceased production of these parts, she said.

She added that all the parts had defects that could not be corrected.

Under the terms of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) pact signed Dec. 8 by President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the U.S. and Soviet governments exchanged information on the number and locations of all their ground-launched medium- and shorter-range missiles.

On-Site Inspections

The treaty calls for all such superpower missiles to be destroyed in about three years, with on-site inspections to verify compliance. Oakley said missile production facilities such as the one in Marshall, Tex., where the defective parts were produced, are exempt from the on-site inspection provisions.

The discovery of the missile parts will mean that the numbers in the “memorandum of understanding” attached to the INF treaty will have to be revised, a U.S. official, who asked not to be identified, said.

“It’s no big deal. It’s really peanuts,” said the source.

Officials said they still are studying information received from Moscow about the Soviet missile inventory. A few instances in which discrepancies are suspected are being reviewed, they said.