Soviets Suggest U.S. Role at Key Radar Station : But Washington Rejects Proposal to Monitor Controversial Facility

The Soviet Union has suggested informally that U.S. and Soviet experts jointly man its controversial Krasnoyarsk radar station in Central Asia to assure that it is used legally, U.S. officials said Thursday.

But the Administration rebuffed the proposal on grounds that the Soviets could eject the Americans and use the radar as they liked.

The offer was one of four put forward in Geneva last month during a U.S.-Soviet meeting dominated by the controversy over the radar, which is partly constructed. The Administration contends that the radar violates the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and must be dismantled unconditionally.

The growing dispute over the radar station threatens to impede progress on a range of arms control issues by the superpowers.

Modifications Proposed

U.S. officials said Viktor P. Karpov, the chief Soviet negotiator, also proposed informally that the huge, flat-faced phased-array radar be technically modified, with U.S. experts present, to prevent it from being used in violation of the treaty.

He also suggested that its configuration could be changed to limit its range, or that it could be dismantled on condition that the United States reaffirm the traditional, or “narrow,” interpretation of the ABM treaty. This interpretation would limit testing of the Administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars,” program to develop an anti-missile defense in space.

U.S. officials emphasized that because none of the proposals was put forward formally, technically none were refused. But they acknowledge that if offered, they would be rejected.

The Administration is standing firm on this, one official said. “We want it dismantled, and we’re not going to pay for the Soviets to remedy their illegal activity in building the station in the first place,” the official added.

The ABM treaty requires that large phased-array radars be built only on the periphery of each country and face outward. This would assure that the facilities were used only for early warning and not for “battle management,” in which radars deep inside the country could determine the targets of incoming warheads and direct interceptor missiles to attack them.

Work Stopped on Facility

Krasnoyarsk is about 3,000 miles from the Arctic border of the Soviet Union. Soviet officials at first insisted the facility was for tracking objects in space. But since then they have tacitly admitted it was illegal by stopping work on it and then offering, with various conditions, to tear it down.

President Reagan so far has rejected majority sentiment among his key agencies in July that the Soviets be declared in “material breach” of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty because of the radar. Such a declaration in international law would permit the United States to abrogate the treaty or violate it in retaliation.

The U.S. delegation to the ABM review conference in Geneva last month, at which the radar station was discussed extensively, demanded that the facility be dismantled and held out the possibility that if it is not, the Administration will consider declaring it a material breach as a last resort.

Bipartisan Support

There is remarkable bipartisan support for the Administration position on the issue. Most Democrats as well as Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, the Democrats’ presidential nominee, endorse the demand that the radar be unconditionally dismantled. Dukakis opposes holding the Soviets in material breach, however, as long as work on Krasnoyarsk is not resumed.

Despite the strong U.S. position, the Soviets indicated after the Geneva meeting that Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze expects to take up the Krasnoyarsk issue, as part of a larger arms control agenda, here next week during a two-day meeting with Secretary of State George P. Shultz.

That probably will be the last formal negotiating session between Kremlin officials and the Reagan Administration. Both sides hope for further progress toward a strategic arms reduction treaty that would cut offensive nuclear weapons in half. Conditions for beginning a new negotiating forum to reduce conventional forces in Europe also will be discussed, officials said.