The World - News from April 11, 1988

The Soviet Union has destroyed six missiles--the first to be scrapped under the Soviet-American intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty, according to official Soviet media. Moscow Radio cited a report in the Defense Ministry newspaper Red Star saying that the SS-12 missiles were blown up at a test range in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan. Their nuclear warheads had been removed, the report said. The Red Star report said tests of the air and soil in the area after the explosion, for which it gave no date, had shown no release of harmful substances. The INF treaty, signed in Washington last December by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and President Reagan, has not been formally ratified by either side.