U.S. Protests Soviet Pacific Missile Tests : Flight Paths Over Hawaii Called Provocative and Dangerous

Just two months after signing an accord with the United States designed to prevent dangerous military activities, the Soviet Union is planning to test missiles on flight paths that would pass over Hawaii, U.S. officials said Friday.

The United States lodged two protests this week over the proposed test flights of unarmed missiles, warning that such moves would be provocative and could endanger the safety of the islands in the event of the missiles’ failure.

But the Soviet Union so far has said it will proceed with several test flights as planned during a period beginning today and ending Aug. 21, Bush Administration officials said.

Technically, the Administration cannot invoke the new accord because it is not scheduled to take formal effect until 1990.

The dispute is the second the Soviets have prompted by scheduling missile tests over U.S. territory. In September, 1987, Moscow relented in the face of American objections and redirected the flight paths of two missile tests.

“It’s a considerable irritant, and it doesn’t fit with the atmospherics of current U.S.-Soviet relations,” said one Administration official who asked not be identified. “We’re telling them it’s not nice, that they’re going to get a lot of Americans pretty upset if they go through with this.”

The long-range missiles, carrying dummy warheads, probably would be launched from the Soviet space center and test site in Tyuratum in eastern Kazakhstan, U.S. officials said. The Soviets regularly launch missiles over the Pacific, but they land far north of Hawaii.

In October, 1987, dummy warheads from a Soviet test flight landed 600 miles northwest of Kauai, the northernmost inhabited Hawaiian island. It was the closest approach yet by the Soviets.

Type Not Ascertained

Officials said they do not know what kind of Soviet long-range missiles would be tested in the forthcoming trials. Those tested in the Pacific in 1987 were believed to be Soviet SS-18s, a type of Soviet “heavy” missile.

The Soviets notified Washington of the impending missile tests earlier this week through the Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, a government-to-government communication link designed to lessen the risk of nuclear war. Moscow provided further details when it announced the missile tests in a safety notice to pilots and mariners.

U.S. officials said one of two splash-down areas proposed by the Soviets lies southeast of Hawaii. Such a path would mean that the missiles would be flying over at least some of Hawaii’s six large islands, which have 1.2 million inhabitants.

The Soviets, responding to the first of two diplomatic protests passed through the Soviet Embassy in Washington, said the missiles would not fly directly over the Hawaiian islands.

“We’re still not satisfied with the answers we’re getting,” one government source said.

The U.S. officials said the tests could pose an early challenge to an agreement signed June 12 by Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, a senior military and arms control adviser to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

The agreement requires U.S. and Soviet military forces to take measures to prevent dangerous military activities. Although the agreement stops short of limiting the rights of free navigation and flight paths, it calls on the armed forces of each country to “exercise great caution and prudence while operating near the national territory of the other party.”

But the agreement does not go into effect until Jan. 1.

“Strictly speaking, it doesn’t apply,” said Lt. Col. William Smullen, a spokesman for Crowe. But he said U.S. officials are now “more sensitive” to the need to avoid provocative military action.

The United States regularly launches missiles from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Lompoc. But officials said those missiles do not fly near Soviet land. Instead, they are designed to drop into Kwajalein atoll in the South Pacific.