Future Soviet Defense Chief May Be Civilian, Yazov Says

Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov, assessing the pace of changes in the Soviet military on the final day of a visit to the United States, speculated Friday that Moscow may break with a centuries-old tradition and pick a civilian as its next defense chief.

“I don’t believe a minister of defense must have the proficiency and the stamina to drop from a plane with a parachute,” said the beribboned Yazov, a general in the Soviet Army. “A minister of defense is more of a political analyst and a politician.”

The Soviet officer’s comments drew a smile from his host, U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, a former congressman from Wyoming.

Yazov said the newly elected Congress of People’s Deputies and the Supreme Soviet, the sitting legislature, may consider changing the policy that dictates that the defense minister must be a military man, a tradition he said dates “from the years of the old Russia, the Russia of Kiev.”

The first Soviet defense minister to visit the United States, Yazov wound up his six-day tour by inviting Cheney to the Soviet Union, an offer Cheney accepted. Defense officials said that visit is likely to take place next year.

Yazov’s comments revealed a Soviet military struggling under President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika, or restructuring, which he stressed “was not contrived to bring about the renewal of the military” in the first place.

“Perestroika was intended to bring about a renewal of the relations in the Soviet society as a whole,” said Yazov. “Naturally, to a certain extent the renewal processes have touched upon the ways of the military and our armed forces.”

The 65-year-old general said that in one recent instance, a military cadet challenged a general officer in an election to the Congress of Peoples’ Deputies--and won. In another, he recounted, lieutenant colonels voted against a proposal of the minister of defense in the Supreme Soviet.

“So these are the rights being enjoyed by all the citizens of our society. So to a certain extent, the perestroika processes have already been practiced in the armed forces of the U.S.S.R.,” Yazov said.

Yazov was the first candidate for his position to face the scrutiny--and scathing criticism--of Soviet legislators before he was narrowly approved last July.

U.S. Troops Praised

Yazov praised the U.S. troops he met and watched in a series of maneuvers at bases across the country. “The power they showed struck us immensely,” he said of the Army’s elite 82nd Airborne paratroopers, who conducted a jump for Yazov at Ft. Bragg, N.C., Friday morning.

In a wide-ranging session with reporters, Yazov launched a peace offensive of his own.

“Let me ask you a question,” Yazov challenged one questioner through an interpreter. “Are you serious about believing that the Soviet Union is preparing to go to war with the United States?

“It is the atmosphere of trust that should be put in the foreground,” he added.

But Yazov turned prickly when he was asked to assess the American B-2 stealth bomber, an aircraft designed to breach Soviet airspace unobserved and deliver nuclear weapons on sensitive Soviet targets.

“We do not consider it to be a challenge on the part of the United States in regard to the Soviet Union. You keep perfecting your military hardware, we also keep perfecting our military weapons systems,” Yazov said.

“We don’t have to modify the Soviet air defense system” in response to the plane, which is now being tested by the Air Force, Yazov said. “The Soviet air defenses have the capability today to bring down any air threat,” he added.

Yazov replaced Sergei L. Sokolov last July after an embarrassing incident in which a 19-year-old West German pilot flew into Soviet airspace unchallenged and landed in Red Square.