Key Lawmakers Discount Soviet Shift on Arms

Congressional leaders, clearly undercutting what President Bush has portrayed as a breakthrough in U.S.-Soviet strategic arms talks, said Monday that the Senate is unlikely to ratify an agreement that does not settle U.S.-Soviet differences over the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and other congressional leaders characterized the latest shift in the Soviet bargaining position at the START talks, as they are known, as a clever move by the Kremlin that puts Bush in a more difficult position.

Support Eroding

At the same time, these leaders said, the shift further erodes congressional support for the missile defense system commonly called “Star Wars.”

The new Soviet position, outlined by Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze during talks last weekend with Secretary of State James A. Baker III, calls for the superpowers to negotiate a treaty limiting offensive strategic nuclear arms without resolving their disagreement over U.S. plans to test the defensive “Star Wars” system. The Soviets contend that such tests would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Although Bush, Baker and other top Administration officials hailed the Soviets’ new position as an important change that could hasten the signing of a START treaty, it soon became apparent that such an agreement would face considerable opposition in Congress.

Congressional approval is a key element in any U.S.-Soviet arms treaty: Not only must the Senate ratify any treaty negotiated by the President but members of both chambers also sit in judgment of Bush’s decisions regarding spending on nuclear weapons, including the “Star Wars” program.

Nunn, the most important voice on arms issues in the Congress, said members of the Senate would find it difficult to approve a START treaty without knowing the future of “Star Wars.”

“If a START agreement is presented to us and we do not know what the Soviets will consider a breach of the ABM Treaty . . . it would be very hard to get it ratified,” Nunn said.

House Armed Services Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.) summed it up even more bluntly: “Is the United States Senate going to ratify an agreement that reduces offenses without knowing where we are going with defenses? The answer is: No.”

Aspin predicted that many top Pentagon officials, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, likely would have the same negative response to the proposal as congressional Democrats.

Likewise, Nunn and Aspin agreed that the Soviet proposal might further undermine the rapidly dwindling support for “Star Wars” funding in Congress.

“SDI, in the short term, is already heading downhill--it’s a perishable commodity,” Nunn said.

Even some stalwart Republican supporters of the program, such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), agreed with the Democrats on how the Soviet proposal would affect funding decisions by Congress.

“To some degree,” McCain said, “it will accelerate the erosion of the support for SDI. . . . It’s another severe impediment for deployment of SDI.”

Although Administration officials insisted that the Soviets had dropped their objections to “Star Wars” unconditionally, Shevardnadze said the Soviets are retaining the right to break out of the START treaty if it is concluded that the United States has violated the ABM agreement.

Congressional leaders said they view this as an extremely cunning effort on the part of the Soviets to obtain both a reduction in U.S. offensive strategic nuclear arms as well as a veto over testing or deployment of “Star Wars” by the Bush Administration.

“It was a very, very clever proposal,” Aspin said. “These guys are very smart. . . . The Kremlin has rolled a Trojan horse up to the White House in the guise of an arms control concession. The Soviet offer on SDI isn’t a real concession. It’s a change in form, not substance. Once inside the negotiations, it’s going to cause a lot of mischief, just like the Trojan horse.”

Nunn, who likewise described it as a “shrewd” move on the part of the Soviets, said the United States cannot in good conscience agree to abide by a START treaty without knowing for certain what kind of “Star Wars” tests would cause the Soviets to abrogate the pact.

“We need to know where they would draw the line between testing and deployment,” he said. “We need to know what they are going to do on defensive weapons.”

Nunn added that the Senate probably would not demand that a START treaty be accompanied by a separate U.S.-Soviet treaty governing defensive weapons--but that senators would certainly insist on a firm understanding on the subject between the superpowers.

Without such an understanding on defensive weapons, he said, “the Soviets will constantly be jerking our cord on SDI.”

For several years, the Democratic-controlled Congress has consistently prohibited the White House from conducting any tests of the “Star Wars” technology that could be viewed as violating the strictest interpretation of the ABM Treaty.

Currently, the House and Senate are squabbling over whether to fully fund “Star Wars” in fiscal 1990. The Senate approved $4.6 billion for the program next year, but the House allowed only $3.1 billion, a cut of about $800 million over the current year.