The Moscow Summit : Soviet Parliament Approves Missile Treaty

The Soviet Union on Saturday approved the treaty with the United States to eliminate land-based intermediate-range missiles from their nuclear arsenals, setting the stage for a formal ratification ceremony at this week’s U.S.-Soviet summit here marking the new relationship between the superpowers.

The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the country’s Parliament, voted unanimously at a special, nationally-televised meeting to approve ratification of the treaty, which was signed at the Washington summit in December by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and President Reagan.

Reagan and Gorbachev are now expected to exchange the formal documents of ratification at the end of this week’s Moscow summit, symbolizing their nations’ commitment both to further improve relations and to other negotiations to limit, reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear arms.

Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the Soviet foreign minister, told the legislators that the treaty, which he described as the first step toward eventual nuclear disarmament, would significantly strengthen Soviet security by improving relations with the United States and easing the East-West confrontation.

He said that ratification will encourage progress on other arms control issues, including the proposed 50% reduction in strategic arms, that Reagan and Gorbachev will discuss here this week.

Defense Minister’s Support

But even stronger support came from Gen. Dmitri T. Yazov, the Soviet defense minister, who said that the country gained strategically with the removal from Western Europe of U.S. Pershing 2 missiles, with their nuclear warheads, because they could hit targets in the European part of the Soviet Union within eight to 10 minutes of launch.

“I fully support this treaty,” Yazov declared. “One cannot simply keep on creating heaps and heaps and heaps of weapons.

“Without such treaties, ensuring the country’s security would require the continuous growth and replacement of weapons systems, and one has to proceed from ever greater replacement levels,” he continued.

“And all this takes place when the country is not at war. What a great burden that is for the people!”

Although Soviet approval of the treaty was never in doubt, members of the Soviet Parliament had deliberated on the treaty for weeks with hearings, discussions and even open debates within the Foreign Affairs Commission that examined the agreement as throughly as it was reviewed by lawmakers in Washington.

Acted After Senate Approval

But the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet acted only on Saturday after the U.S. Senate had, after days of its own, often angry debate, voted Friday, 93 to 5, to accept the treaty.

The Soviet discussion, while almost prosaic compared to the U.S. version, opened a window on the political forces that affect such a key foreign policy issue as arms negotiation.

Senate approval of the treaty was greeted with both relief and joy here. Government officials and ordinary Soviet citizens alike saw it as a critical test of the U.S. commitment to improved relations with the Soviet Union.

Soviet observers were also mindful that the Senate had refused to ratify the last three arms agreements negotiated between the two countries. Had this agreement been rejected, or simply deferred, the Soviet leadership would probably have had difficulty in justifying further talks on any arms control treaty--the humiliation would have been far too great.

“The American Administration’s ability to deliver was in question here,” a senior Soviet specialist on U.S. relations commented Saturday. “If the White House cannot deliver Senate approval on a treaty that everyone, members of both parties and virtually all the specialists, agrees is a real gain, then why should we talk about anything more?

Soviet ‘Constituency Problems’

“This is very strongly felt in our leadership, which has its own constituency problems. Americans like to say that ratification for us is a legislative single ‘rubber stamp,’ but our political situation has become far more dynamic than that.”

Yegor K. Ligachev, who ranks second in the Communist Party hierarchy after Gorbachev, said that legislators had heard many questions, many doubts about the treaty from people who thought it was a bad deal and should be rejected.

Most critics, he said, believed that Moscow had erred seriously in agreeing to scrap more than twice as many weapons as Washington and in not including British and French nuclear weapons in the agreement. Others questioned the verification procedures. And some felt, he added, that the United States was not trustworthy.

“We knew from Soviet people’s letters that a portion of our citizens were worried whether (the treaty’s) implementation would fully meet the security needs of the country,” Yazov told the lawmakers.

“A comprehensive and profound conclusion of the issue--and let the (legislative commissions) draw the conclusion that the principle of equality and equal security of the Soviet Union and its allies remained relatively unchanged.”