East Bloc Asks Talks With West on Cuts in Tactical A-Weapons

The seven Warsaw Pact nations meeting in East Berlin called Wednesday for negotiations with the Western Alliance to reduce the number of short-range tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and then eliminate them.

Although a drastic cut in tactical atomic weapons has been suggested before by Moscow and East Berlin, this was the first formal proposal by the Communist powers.

“We expect a constructive answer to our proposals,” said East German Foreign Minister Oskar Fischer. “One really should not waste any more time.”

The offer is certain to stir controversy and elicit a mixed response from members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, since the NATO powers are split over the sensitive issue of cutting short-range nuclear weapons--those with a range of less than 300 miles.

All NATO members would like to see a reduction in the number of tactical nuclear warheads and launching systems in Europe. But the United States, Britain, France and the conservative side of the coalition governing West Germany oppose the abolition of the weapons because of their view that the Warsaw Pact has numerical superiority in conventional weapons, such as troops, tanks and artillery.

“Short-range nuclear weapons still form a part of our deterrent,” said one Western strategist here. “We should not negotiate them all away until we get reductions in conventional forces.

“But once European nations, particularly West Germany, get into talks, it will be difficult for Bonn to resist a Warsaw Pact offer to eliminate short-range nuclear weapons altogether.”

The Warsaw Pact foreign ministers, after a two-day meeting, called for early talks between the two major, opposing alliances. Their statement said that such talks could run in conjunction with the new round of conventional arms negotiations that began on a hopeful note between the two sides in Vienna early last month.

It declared: “The states party to the Warsaw Treaty propose to the member states of the North Atlantic alliance to start in the near future separate talks on tactical nuclear arms in Europe, including the nuclear component of dual-capable systems.”

Dual-capable systems are those weapons--missiles, artillery, bombs--that can be equipped with conventional or nuclear warheads.

“It could also be agreed from the outset to implement the reduction of tactical nuclear arms and their elimination in stages,” said the communique issued by the Warsaw Pact members--the Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria.

The announcement suggested that the nuclear powers in the two alliances--the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France--should begin the first phase of negotiations, to be joined later by those countries with nuclear missiles deployed on their territory.

Since the issue of intermediate-range nuclear missiles--those with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles--was settled last year in a treaty between Moscow and Washington, focus has shifted to the shorter-range nuclear weapons. In that category, the West has only 88 ground-launched Lance missiles with a range of about 70 miles. Against these are arrayed about 1,400 Soviet ground-to-ground short-range missiles, based in East Germany and Czechoslovakia.

The NATO forces also have more than 4,000 nuclear warheads for use with shorter-range artillery weapons, although most military experts view these as obsolete.

The Warsaw Pact declaration said that participants in the talks could draw up verification procedures and set up an international commission to supervise compliance.

The offer was announced at a news conference at which Foreign Minister Fischer said that cuts in tactical missiles are necessary to ensure lasting European security. The Communist statement said that the proper atmosphere for talks would be improved if both sides renounced modernizing short-range missiles.

This was directed at another sensitive area in NATO’s nuclear doctrine: Washington, London, and Paris want to upgrade the aging Lance missiles, which will become obsolescent by the mid-1990s.

Kohl Seeks Delay

However, West German public opinion against such modernization has been rising and Chancellor Helmut Kohl, facing increasing criticism, said that he wants to put off a decision until after the December, 1990, national election.

He was supported Tuesday by Belgian Prime Minister Wilfried Martens, who said that NATO’s short-range missiles should be modernized but that their range should not be increased. In any case, he said, a decision should be delayed.

The Warsaw Pact announcement is likely to complicate next week’s meeting in Brussels of the NATO defense ministers, who themselves will be preparing for the NATO summit conference--President Bush’s first--in the Belgian capital May 29-30.

NATO planners have been trying to work out a comprehensive document that would spell out a joint strategy for arms control and for dealing with the political changes taking place in Eastern Europe. But the planners in Brussels say they have not been getting much guidance from the Bush Administration, which is still formally reviewing foreign and arms control policy.

Similarly, the talks in Geneva between the United States and the Soviet Union to reduce the long-range nuclear strategic arsenal by half have been suspended pending the Washington policy review.