Soviet Missile Pullout: 24 Weapons

The Soviet Union’s plan to pull tactical nuclear missiles out of Eastern Europe unilaterally will cover only “a couple of dozen” weapons, Deputy Soviet Foreign Minister Viktor P. Karpov said Monday.

Karpov, one of Moscow’s leading experts on disarmament, made the disclosure during a news conference at a U.N.-sponsored discussion on conventional disarmament.

Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze made headlines when he announced in a speech Jan. 19 that the Kremlin would withdraw some of its so-called battlefield nuclear weapons, generally missiles with ranges under 300 miles.

The United States has said that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has reduced its tactical nuclear stockpile in Europe by 2,400 warheads since 1979.

Karpov spoke to a gathering of government officials and scholars from 30 countries in the wake of the close last week of the 27-month Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. He said that the gap between NATO and Warsaw Pact proposals on reducing conventional weapons can be bridged.

The three days of meetings in Geneva, which began on Monday, are sponsored by the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research with the aim of pooling disarmament ideas in a freer format than controlled negotiations.