Soviets Offer to Give Up Vietnam Base : Gorbachev’s Proposal Includes Navy’s Exit From the Philippines

Mikhail S. Gorbachev announced today that the Kremlin is ready to give up a key naval base in Vietnam if U.S. forces leave their bases in the Philippines.

The Soviet leader also said his government had frozen nuclear weapons stocks in Soviet Asia and proposed the creation of an international center on the peaceful use of outer space at a Siberian radar station, Tass press agency reported.

It appeared that Gorbachev was proposing the elimination or conversion of the Krasnoyarsk radar station, which the U.S. government claims is a breach of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and whose existence has stymied progress at the Geneva arms talks.

Reagan’s Response

President Reagan, asked about the proposal today, said he would study it. “I look forward to doing that because certainly we want to do anything we can to help bring about a better relationship between our two countries,” he said.

Gorbachev reiterated his call for a Sino-Soviet summit and also called on Japan not to increase its military strength.

The Soviet leader read aloud a seven-point plan “aimed at strengthening security in the Asia-Pacific region” during a meeting with Communist Party and local government workers in the city of Krasnoyarsk, 2,000 miles east of Moscow.

“Aware of the Asian and Pacific countries’ concern, the Soviet Union will not increase the amount of any nuclear weapons in the region--it has already been practicing this for some time--and is calling on the United States and other nuclear powers not to deploy them additionally in the region,” Tass said today.

Additionally, “if the United States agrees to the elimination of military bases in the Philippines, the Soviet Union will be ready, by agreement with the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, to give up the fleet’s material and technical supply station in Cam Ranh Bay.”

Largest Base Abroad

Cam Ranh Bay is the Soviets’ largest naval deployment base abroad and has permitted them to establish a permanent naval presence in the South China Sea and to support naval operations in the Indian Ocean.

The two major U.S. bases in the Philippines--Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark Air Base--are the largest U.S. military bases outside the United States, and many Filipinos have sought their removal since the February, 1986, ouster of Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos.

Negotiations have stalled between the United States and the Philippines on terms for the final years of the 1947 Military Bases Agreement, which expires in 1991.