Soviets Offer to Give West Details on E. Europe Forces

The Soviet Union on Monday offered to provide the West with details of its forces’ strength and weaponry in Eastern Europe and then allow inspections before negotiations begin on conventional arms cuts.

The proposal, voiced at a Moscow news conference by Foreign Ministry arms control chief Viktor P. Karpov, was the latest in a series from the East Bloc apparently aimed at breaking a logjam in talks in Vienna on the issue.

At a summit meeting last weekend in Poland, the Warsaw Pact military alliance offered to exchange military information before the start of negotiations and then allow the data provided to be checked by both sides after the talks begin.

“We are even ready to have that checking take place before the beginning of the talks,” Karpov told the news conference, called to discuss the two-day summit in Warsaw.

Karpov said a proposal by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to remove Soviet aircraft from Eastern Europe in exchange for the withdrawal from Western Europe of 72 U.S. F-16 fighters had been formally put to Washington and Rome.

“We are now awaiting their reply,” he added.

The F-16s, currently based in Spain, are to be transferred to Italy by 1991. Italian Foreign Minister Guilio Andreotti told reporters Saturday that the Soviet proposal would still leave imbalances.

Gorbachev made the offer in a speech to the Polish Parliament, the Sejm, on July 11.

In that speech, Gorbachev also suggested the calling of an all-European summit conference to launch the negotiations on cuts in conventional forces. The reduction talks would encompass the entire continent, from the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains in the Soviet Union.

He also proposed the setting up of an East-West center aimed at reducing the risk of war between the two blocs.

Although none of the Gorbachev proposals were included in three documents issued after the summit, Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Ivan P. Aboimov told Monday’s news conference they had the support of the seven-member Warsaw Pact alliance.

“They were Soviet initiatives. It was not our aim to have them included in the documents,” he said.

The Warsaw Pact leaders themselves offered to hold separate talks, outside of the coming conventional arms negotiations, on tactical nuclear missiles and nuclear warheads for so-called dual-capable delivery systems.

Dual-capable missiles, which Karpov said Monday account for 60% to 70% of the short-range weaponry held by the Warsaw Pact and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, can deliver either nuclear or conventional warheads.

“So if we are to discuss conventional reductions in Europe seriously, we cannot ignore these arms, and they must be made a subject of the negotiations,” Karpov declared.