Little Progress in Arms Talks, Both Sides Say

U.S. and Soviet officials ended the first round of nuclear arms negotiations under the Bush Administration on Monday without making progress on major disagreements.

“Whatever progress has been made does not involve, to my regret, solutions to major outstanding issues,” chief Soviet negotiator Yuri K. Nazarkin told a news conference after a brief exchange of documents with his U.S. counterpart, Richard R. Burt.

Burt took a more optimistic view in a separate news conference. “While there were no major breakthroughs, we achieved good, solid progress on a range of issues,” he said.

After reviewing defense policy for three months, President Bush decided to pursue broadly the same goals as the Reagan Administration in the talks, which are directed at finding an agreement on halving the superpowers’ long-range nuclear arsenals to 6,000 warheads.

After seven weeks of negotiations, much of the time devoted to understanding each other’s positions, neither Burt nor Nazarkin was willing to predict when a strategic arms reduction (START) agreement could be signed.

They said they have made some progress on issues that are not very divisive politically, such as the technically difficult concept of how to ensure that the other side is not cheating.

The two most important areas of disagreement are whether to limit the number of sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs) and whether an accord on long-range missiles should be linked to an agreement on space-based defenses such as the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

Nazarkin said “the problem of long-range SLCMs continues to be the most controversial.” Washington says it is impossible to verify limits on these missiles, fitted to submarines roaming the seas. Moscow disagrees.

The Soviet ambassador said disagreement was so fundamental on “defense and space” that no improvements at all have been made on a draft text.