Soviets Invite World Dignitaries to View 1st Destruction of Missiles

The Soviet Union on Wednesday invited representatives of the world community to witness the start of its destruction of intermediate- and shorter-range nuclear missiles.

Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze told the U.N. General Assembly that the event will take place “in just a few days.” He did not say where the destruction will take place.

“The Soviet Union invites the United Nations secretary general, representatives of the members of the Security Council, the representative of Zimbabwe as the current chairman of the Nonaligned Movement and delegates to the Conference on Disarmament to attend one of the first missile-elimination procedures,” he said.

There are 15 members of the Security Council, including the United States, Britain, France, China, West Germany, Italy and Japan. The Conference on Disarmament numbers 40 members.

Shevardnadze, speaking to a U.N. special session on disarmament, also invited the United States to join the Soviet Union in banning all nuclear tests as part of a sweeping new disarmament proposal.

Shevardnadze said the goal is “a step-by-step elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2000.”

He also called for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact to each reduce their forces by 500,000 troops.

For the first time, Shevardnadze declared that the Soviet Union would announce the presence or absence of nuclear weapons on naval ships on foreign port calls if the United States and Western allies did the same.