Bush Offers Cut in Chemical Arms : U.S. Proposes Slashing Arsenal 80% if Soviets Will Reduce to Equal Level

President Bush, declaring that “the world has lived too long in the shadow of chemical warfare,” offered Monday to destroy 80% of the U.S. arsenal of deadly chemical weapons. But he tied the proposal to an agreement by the Soviet Union to bring its even greater stockpile into balance with that of the United States.

The offer was part of a program intended to rid the world of chemical weapons over a 10-year period. As a second step, the President proposed that within eight years after signing a treaty setting such a goal, the United States would destroy 98% of its chemical weapons, if the Soviet Union joined the agreement.

“Let us act together, beginning today, to rid the Earth of this scourge,” Bush said, in his first speech as President to the U.N. General Assembly.

It appeared by early evening that some reaction from the Kremlin may already have reached New York. As he was greeted by Bush and then Secretary of State James A. Baker III in a receiving line before a dinner Bush gave at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze could be heard telling the President and then the secretary of state: “We have some news from Moscow.”

Baker told the foreign minister that they would talk about it in New York within the next day or so, and Brent A. Scowcroft, Bush’s national security adviser, told reporters that while the nature of the news is uncertain, it could be a reply to the President’s chemical weapons proposal.

Bush’s proposal was made in the midst of a series of spiraling arms control developments that have suddenly propelled the United States and the Soviet Union toward greater prospects for agreement on several key issues that have stymied superpower negotiators for years.

On Saturday, Shevardnadze disclosed that the Soviets would be willing to separate discussions on space-based weapons from talks on strategic, or long-range, nuclear weapons, raising hopes within the Bush Administration that a treaty reducing superpower nuclear weapons could be ready for signing when Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Bush meet at a summit conference next year.

Shevardnadze, who will address the United Nations today, offered a brief but upbeat assessment of the President’s proposal.

“We have a positive view because from the very beginning we have stood for a total elimination of chemical weapons stockpiles,” he told reporters. Baker said he had informed Shevardnadze of the proposal during their weekend meetings in Wyoming.

The Soviet Union has acknowledged holding 50,000 tons of chemical weapons. The United States’ stockpile is believed to be about 30,000 tons. Thus, Scowcroft said, “the Soviets would have to destroy a great deal more than we would to get down to equal levels.”

With attention focused in recent years on nuclear and conventional weapons, the effort to rid the world of chemical weapons has taken a back seat. However, the need to eliminate the threat they pose has been given increased urgency with their use in the Iran-Iraq War and the reported use in Afghanistan by the Soviet forces fighting U.S.-backed guerrillas, as well as their suspected spread to a number of Third World nations, including Libya.

Negotiations intended to draw up a 40-nation treaty on chemical weapons controls have been stalled in Geneva for several years.

And at an international chemical weapons conference in Canberra, Australia, last week, the United States came under criticism for what other delegates complained was a foot-dragging approach.

The proposal made Monday, Baker said, “ought to put that to rest.”

Because chemical weapons provide an instrument of mass destruction to those nations unable to manufacture or obtain nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, some Third World nations have expressed a reluctance to halt development of their own chemical weapons--or to get rid of their stockpiles until the United States and the Soviet Union reduce their chemical and nuclear weaponry.

Baker, responding to such arguments of some smaller nations, said at a news conference in New York: “This proposal really attacks the proliferation problem by making it impossible for them to argue that the major countries have chemical weapons, ‘and why shouldn’t we develop them.’

“It is logical for the countries that have these weapons to say, ‘You shouldn’t develop them. They’re abhorrent, and we’re going to get rid of ours,’ ” the secretary of state said.

Even without progress on the President’s proposal, the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile is likely to fall during the next decade.

Under congressional order, the Pentagon must destroy by 1997 all of its stocks of aging poison gases, which would be replaced by smaller amounts of so-called binary weapons. Binary weapons are made up of two relatively harmless components that do not become lethal until combined just before reaching their targets.

But Baker argued that if the United States follows the congressional mandate fully and builds up its arsenal of binary weapons, “our chemical stocks would be vastly greater than the interim 20% level that the President’s initiative talks about.”

Bush, who served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 1971 and 1972, was given a warm reception when he entered the General Assembly. But only a lukewarm reaction greeted his remarks.

In 1984, when he was vice president, Bush presented to the Geneva disarmament conference a draft of a treaty that would have banned development, acquisition, production, stockpiling and transfer of chemical weapons.

During the five years since then, he said, “progress has been made” toward such a goal. But, he added, “time is running out. The threat is growing.”

“For the sake of mankind, we must halt and reverse this threat,” he continued. “The United States is ready to begin now. We will eliminate more than 80% of our stockpile, even as we work to complete a treaty, if the Soviet Union joins us in cutting chemical weapons to an equal level, and we agree on the conditions, including inspections, under which stockpiles are destroyed.”

And, he said, “in the first eight years of a chemical weapons treaty, the United States is ready to destroy nearly all--98%--of our chemical weapons stockpile, provided the Soviet Union joins the ban. I think they will.

“Second, we are ready to destroy all our chemical weapons, 100%, every one, within 10 years, once all nations capable of building chemical weapons sign that total ban treaty.”

To the suggestion that the remaining 2% was intended to provide a measure of protective deterrence while Libya maintains chemical weapons, Scowcroft replied, “Yes, that’s the principle.”

The President added that “monitoring a total ban on chemical weapons will be a challenge.” But he said that the experience gained from dealing with similar problems involving other weapons reductions “makes me believe we can achieve the level of verification that gives us confidence to go forward with the ban.”

Times staff writer Don Shannon contributed to this report.

DEATH FROM A TEST TUBE

Chemical weapons are designed to disable or destroy an enemy either indirectly, by contaminating the food supply, or by direct contact. Main method of attack is to form a cloud of fine particles (an aerosol) of the material that remains airborne until the enemy inhales it. Secondary method is for toxic material to penetrate the skin.

As advantages, adherents of chemical weapons say the materials (1) are effective over wide areas, (2) normally do little property damage and (3) can be effective without killing, if that is the objective.

TYPES OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS

Lethal agents--Primarily known as nerve gases, which kill by asphyxiation after they rob the subject of respiratory control. They are odorless and colorless, and the dose required to kill a human is very small. Lethal agents may be either vapor or liquid, to be either inhaled or absorbed through skin or eyes.

Incapacitating agents--May be designed to attack any system of the body, reducing one’s ability to function. After being affected, victim may fully recover, as in case of tear gas; with more toxic agents such as mustard gas, effects may linger. One incapacitating agent, called BZ, causes confusion and staggering; another causes vomiting.

HISTORY

Chemical warfare was first used on large scale in World War I by Germans in 1915; later, both sides used gas, notably mustard, chlorine and phosgene. Casualties on both sides were extensive, although death rate was low.

Most recent documented use was during 1980-88 Persian Gulf War, when Iraq used deadly chemical weapons against both Iran and Kurdish minority in Iraq, although Iraq denies accusation. U.S. use of herbicide Agent Orange in Vietnam War, although aimed at plant life, is believed to have affected thousands. U.S. also accused Viet Cong of using chemical weapons.

Use of chemical weapons is prohibited by international law, although many countries, including U.S. and Soviet Union, reserve right to use such weapons if they are attacked with them. There are continuing efforts to ban existence of the weapons themselves.

Because of great danger that would result from a leak, most newer chemical weapons are known as the binary type. Each delivery vehicle--an artillery shell, for example--contains two substances that do not mix and become toxic until the shell, bomb or rocket is detonated.

COUNTRIES WITH CHEMICAL WEAPONS

Four countries known to have chemical weapons: United States, Soviet Union, France and Iraq, although Iraq does not admit having them.

Another 17 countries are believed to have such weapons: Afghanistan, China, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Israel, Libya, Myanmar (Burma), Nicaragua, North Korea, Pakistan, Romania, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

Sources: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Yearbook; Encyclopedia Americana; “Future Fire--Weapons for the Apocalypse”; Associated Press

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