No NATO Ally Pulling Enough Weight: Shultz

Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today at the end of a two-day NAT0 meeting that no ally was pulling enough weight in the defense of the West.

The spring meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s foreign ministers was the first high-level allied meeting since President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev met in Moscow a week ago.

The ministers reviewed political and economic changes in Eastern Europe and the sharing of the economic burden of NATO’s defense but reached no policy decisions.

Before flying back to Washington, Shultz said at a news conference, “I’m not satisfied that anybody is pulling their weight satisfactorily, and what we have to do is sort of jack each other up all the time.”

But he added, “We were not trying to get commitments on this, that or the other.”

‘Strong Pitch’ Planned

A U.S. official had said on the eve of the conference that Shultz planned to make “a strong pitch” for NATO partners to increase their share of NATO defense expenses.

The United States has complained that allies spend only an average 3.3% of their gross national product on defense compared with the American outlay of 6.7%.

Secretary General Lord Carrington, who ends his four-year term as NATO leader June 30, told reporters that “there is a feeling in Europe that the United States does not understand exactly what Europe is doing (in defense) and how some of these things are rather incalculable.”

In a low-key statement issued at the end of the conference, the ministers referred to the need to resume meetings in Vienna on conventional arms and human rights at an early date.