Soviets Plan Chemical Arms Cut : Shultz Welcomes Move, Cites U.S. Reduction in Stocks

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze declared Sunday that Moscow will soon begin the “elimination of our chemical weapons stockpiles.”

The Soviet minister’s surprise announcement came at a meeting here of 145 nations to pursue a global ban on the production and use of such weapons.

“We welcome that statement,” Secretary of State George P. Shultz said at a news conference he held shortly before leaving Paris to return to Washington.

Shultz said the United States is also engaged in “destroying our unitary stocks” of chemical weapons.

The United States stopped producing unitary poison gases in 1969, but in 1987, it began making so-called binary weapons--two separated chemicals that only become active and poisonous when exploded together in a shell or bomb.

Building Special Facility

In his statement, Shevardnadze said the Soviet Union will “soon complete the construction of a CW (chemical warfare) facility at which we shall proceed immediately to the elimination of our chemical weapons stockpiles.”

“Indeed,” he added, “we shall begin doing that even before the conclusion of the (Geneva chemical warfare) convention.”

A senior U.S. official said that Shevardnadze was referring to what he called a “field mobile unit” for the destruction of poison gas supplies.

The official, a member of the American delegation to the chemical warfare conference, said the Soviet Union is about to begin doing what the United States has done for some time--eliminate old chemical weapons.

‘Playing Catch-Up’

“What they are doing is playing catch-up,” the official said.

He explained that the Kremlin is building a new plant to destroy poisonous chemical agents at Chapkyevsk near the Ural Mountains but that the complex is not yet complete. But the stocks being destroyed, he added, are probably old and obsolescent lethal chemicals.

In his speech, Shevardnadze referred to the United States when he said: “There is another country that possesses equally significant chemical weapons stockpiles and that could share with us the task of finding compromise solutions in the interests of comprehensive and global verification.

“We call upon all countries--those which produce chemical weapons as well as those which have resumed their production or intend to manufacture them--to demonstrate their responsibility to the world community and stop doing that.”

In pointing to the effects of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, or openness, the foreign minister declared that “over the past two years, our position has evolved in a radical way--from manufacturing chemical weapons to abandoning their production altogether; from hushing up data on existing stockpiles to publishing such data; from seeking to protect chemical production and storage facilities from the eyes of others to recognizing the concept of comprehensive verification and inviting foreign observers to watch the elimination of chemical weapons.”

In Washington, Shevardnadze’s speech received cautious approval from U.S. lawmakers and officials.

Sen. David L. Boren (D-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley” that he welcomes the move as a “first step” toward progress on negotiations for an effective, verifiable ban on chemical weapons.

Such a ban would have to include the right to unannounced inspections of suspect sites “to make sure that they are not adding new weapons as fast as they’re destroying old ones,” Boren said.

On the same program, H. Allen Holmes, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, said the United States will not give up its deterrent capability in chemical weapons “until we have a fully negotiated, verifiable treaty.”

U.S. Urged to Hold Off

William F. Burns, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and a member of the U.S. delegation to the Paris chemical weapons conference, recommended on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation” that the United States withhold an immediate reaction to the Soviet commitment pending the outcome of negotiations toward a chemical weapons treaty now under way in Geneva.

The United States and the Soviet Union are the only two countries that admit to producing poison gases and stockpiling the chemical warfare agents.

However, about 20 other nations are thought to have the ability to produce these agents, and some, like Iraq, have done so and used them in battle.

Shevardnadze said the new chemical warfare convention being sought in Geneva “should provide for short-notice challenge inspections of any site or facility with no right of refusal.”

‘Unlimited Access’

Inspectors, he said, should have “unlimited access to any sites and facilities to be verified, with the exception of living quarters.”

Shultz also spoke approvingly of this Soviet proposal, but he said that the problem for negotiators is “translating it into workable procedures.”

One problem with verification the United States faces is insisting that private chemical plants be opened to international inspectors, perhaps thereby exposing valuable trade and commercial secrets to outsiders.

Shultz said that somehow U.S. firms “will have to accept a degree of inspection,” even though it could cause them “heartburn.”

To Invite Inspection

Shevardnadze said that when the Soviet chemical warfare “elimination facility” becomes operational, “we shall invite representatives from interested countries to visit that facility.”

“We are also planning a seminar,” he added, “to share experience in destroying chemical weapons.”

Shevardnadze said that although the Soviet Union has long possessed chemical weapons, “even in our most tragic times” they had never been used. (Some authorities believe the Soviets may have employed poison gas in Afghanistan.)

The Soviet official also claimed that his country “does not have chemical weapons outside its national territory,” which would suggest that Soviet troops in Western Europe are not equipped with chemical warfare agents.

Shevardnadze argued that the Soviet Union “has never transferred those weapons to any other state.”

Shultz said that out-of-date American chemical weapons have been destroyed at a plant at Tooele, Utah, but that a modern, new complex is being built for such purposes at Johnston Island, a U.S. possession in the south-central Pacific.

And Shultz said that the net total of American stocks of chemical arms is constantly being reduced.

Times staff writer Don Irwin in Washington contributed to this article.