NEWS ANALYSIS : Disagreement Seen on Soviet Concession

Despite an otherwise highly successful meeting, top U.S. and Soviet officials appeared to disagree Saturday on the meaning of a Soviet concession on the strategic arms negotiations at the end of two days of talks here.

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze confirmed that the Soviets will now allow a strategic arms reduction treaty (START) on offensive weapons to be completed without a tandem agreement covering anti-missile defenses. It previously insisted on linking the two issues. But he insisted that the Soviets retained the right to break out of START if the United States violates the existing Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), which bans deployment of missile defenses and strictly curtails development work on such weapons.

This condition, if true, seems to reduce considerably the significance of the Soviet “concession.”

But Secretary of State James A. Baker III maintained immediately after Shevardnadze made his statement that the Soviet move was “unconditional,” and he continued to describe it as a “positive development” in U.S.-Soviet arms negotiations.

Baker noted that the START agreement, as now drafted, contains a provision allowing either side to withdraw with six months’ notice if it decided that its “supreme national interest” required it.

By implication, the Soviets will already have the right to withdraw from START independent of the ABM issue, and therefore, their view of U.S. compliance or non-compliance on defenses was irrelevant.

A senior U.S. official summed up: U.S. behavior on missile defenses “is not an escape clause” any longer.

So it appeared that the Soviets have, in fact, moved significantly to clear much of the underbrush that has long stood in the way of the START pact to cut U.S. and Soviet intercontinental nuclear arsenals by about half.

But the squabbling also indicated that considerable hard bargaining remains before such a treaty is signed, despite hints that it might be completed as early as midyear, when the next U.S.-Soviet summit meeting is now scheduled.

And whether Baker or Shevardnadze is correct, President Bush probably faces a hard choice between a START agreement now within striking distance and some of the more ambitious tests proposed for the Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars” program.

Baker insisted that the Administration “strongly supports” SDI, conceived by former President Ronald Reagan in 1983. However, the program has run into fiscal and technical problems that has caused it to be scaled back.

Bush may be called upon to scale it back even more if liberal members of Congress, North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies and the public come to fear the Soviets might withdraw from START if certain tests are approved.

Non-government analysts greeted the several Soviet moves on arms issues here, particularly the decoupling of START from the defense and space talks, as heartening developments.

“The Soviets have taken all the excuses out of the way in pushing the Administration to finish a START deal,” Jack Mendelsohn, deputy director of the private Arms Control Assn., said.

“President Bush must now decide whether a START treaty is worth the price of preserving the ABM treaty in a way that curbs space tests of SDI,” Mendelsohn added.