Shevardnadze Blasts Bush’s Efforts on Arms

Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze accused President Bush today of depriving the world of major arms control agreements by not taking advantage of opportunities created by the Reagan Administration.

Shevardnadze made the harsh criticism in an interview with the government daily Izvestia in advance of his Sept. 22-23 meeting with Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

The criticism was remarkable because it dealt not only with arms control but with the U.S. attitude toward perestroika, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reform program. It contrasted with generally upbeat comments by Soviet officials lately about U.S.-Soviet relations.

“I think that because of the restrained, indecisive position of the American Administration, both the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R., as well as the entire world community, have lost a lot,” Shevardnadze said in the interview, which was splashed across half a page.

He contrasted the “constraint and timidity” of the Bush Administration on arms control with progress made during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, which ended in January.

‘A Peculiar Lull’

“After recent stormy years, a peculiar lull has set in. The tempo of movement toward new agreements, in any case on the key directions of real nuclear disarmament, don’t satisfy us,” Shevardnadze said.

The Soviet envoy contrasted the 1987 superpower agreement to eliminate medium-range nuclear weapons with a lack of progress under Bush on pacts to reduce strategic nuclear weapons and ban nuclear weapons tests.

In June, he said, Soviet negotiators entered resumed talks on strategic arms with fresh proposals, but despite “promised ‘new ideas,’ our American partners frequently preferred to cite a lack of principle decisions in Washington,” he said.

The result, Shevardnadze said, has been that the Geneva talks are “frozen.”