Accuse Soviets of ABM Breach, Reagan Urged

By a slim 3-to-2 margin, key government agencies last week recommended to President Reagan that he accuse the Soviet Union of having committed a “material breach” of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty when it constructed a huge phased-array radar station at Krasnoyarsk, according to informed sources.

If he accepts the recommendation without qualification, the stage would be set for the United States to abrogate the treaty, which is the cornerstone of the strategic arms control relationship between the superpowers. Alternatively, according to international law, the United States could make a comparable, although not necessarily similar, breach of the treaty.

No Action Yet

The President has not yet acted on the sentiment expressed at the National Security Planning Group meeting last Wednesday at which three of the five participants--Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci, CIA Director William H. Webster and William F. Burns, the arms control and disarmament chief--endorsed the “breach” accusation, the sources told The Times.

The positions of Webster and Burns surprised the arms control community. At previous discussions of the issue, they had joined the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State Department in opposing such a move.

However, Webster and Burns were also reportedly willing to support a U.S. demand that the Soviets demolish the two 10-story-tall Krasnoyarsk radar buildings, “or else” the United States will charge them with material breach of the treaty, the sources said.

As now envisaged, the U.S. charge of “material breach” would be put to the Soviets at the next review conference on the ABM treaty, the first since the radar station was detected by reconnaissance satellites in 1983. Computer-operated phased-array radars, which do not require large revolving “dishes,” are considered a key element in missile defense systems.

The treaty states that such a conference will be held every five years. The upcoming review must be held by early October at the latest. The United States has proposed that the talks be convened during the last half of this month in Geneva. Moscow has not yet responded.

There is widespread agreement within the U.S. government that the Soviets violated the treaty by constructing the radar station. The Soviets have virtually admitted as much by announcing last October that work had been stopped on the station and by allowing a U.S. congressional delegation to inspect the empty shells of the buildings.

The treaty permits such radar stations only on the periphery of each country, and facing outward. The Krasnoyarsk unit, identical to half a dozen other Soviet stations that are properly located, is hundreds of miles from the Chinese border. But more important, it is thousands of miles from the northeastern Arctic coast, toward which it is oriented.

The argument against declaring the station to be a “material breach” is that the United States should be prepared to take the next step: break out of the treaty or undertake a comparable violation. It is not prepared to do either, particularly at a time of warming U.S.-Soviet relations, of fiscal restraint and of pending presidential elections.

‘A Matter of Principle’

The argument for taking the strong stand is that Krasnoyarsk, even now, remains a blatant and deliberate violation of the treaty. “If you don’t call that radar a breach, you’ll never call anything a breach,” one source said. “It’s a matter of principle.”

“The fact that it is an empty shell is not important,” he added. “What if the Soviets built 100 new missile silos? Would those be violations of arms agreements only after the missiles were put inside?”

Moscow, in an effort to deflect charges about Krasnoyarsk, has accused the United States of comparable breaches in converting two old early warning radar units--at Thule, Greenland, and Fyling Dales, England--to phased-array radar stations. The inference is that the Soviets would be willing to dismantle Krasnoyarsk for some compensatory U.S. move. Washington is unwilling to consider such a trade.

Another possibility of compromise may exist in the disagreement between the United States and the Soviet Union over whether the treaty permits testing of space-based anti-missile weapons as envisaged in the Administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars” program.

“The Soviets would be foolish, in my view, to demolish Krasnoyarsk in order to keep the ABM treaty intact while this Administration continues to insist on the ‘broad interpretation’ of the treaty,” Jack Mendelsohn of the Arms Control Assn. said Sunday.