Nunn’s Panel Finds Missile Treaty Flaws

The Senate Armed Services Committee, after 30 meetings over a period of three months, Monday called on senators to clear up three flaws in the U.S.-Soviet intermediate-range missile treaty before agreeing to its ratification.

Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) said the agreement should be more specific on the kinds of futuristic weapons systems it would ban, that it should be clearer on range definitions and that it should have one passage of imprecise language clarified.

The findings, delivered to the Foreign Relations Committee, which is preparing the treaty for floor action, did not appear to damage the treaty’s prospects for easy approval appreciably.

But the findings did cause the Foreign Relations panel to delay a vote on the treaty for at least a day to address the new concerns. Meanwhile, the full Senate scheduled a closed session for this morning to discuss secret information concerning the agreement, including much-debated estimates of the size of the Soviet Union’s SS-20 missile force.

Under the agreement signed by President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev last December, all ground-launched missiles with ranges of 300 to 3,400 miles would be outlawed.

Ban on Warheads

Although the agreement is aimed at reducing the threat of a nuclear exchange in Europe, it also prevents either the Soviet Union or the United States from having intermediate-range, ground-launched cruise missiles with conventional (non-nuclear) warheads.

That provision has been sharply criticized by treaty critics. Nunn, testifying before the Foreign Relations Committee late Monday, said that the issue has received special attention from his own committee.

Its report, he said, calls for the Senate to take a specific stand against banning of air- and sea-launched cruise missiles of any range by the strategic arms reduction treaty now being negotiated by U.S and Soviet officials.

Senators on the Armed Services panel approved the report, recommending ratification of the agreement on mid-range missiles, by a vote of 18 to 2, Nunn said. The 50-page report will be sent to the Foreign Relations Committee today.