Soviet General Warns of Danger in Troop Cuts

Soviet troop withdrawals from Eastern Europe pose dangers for Moscow, a senior army officer said Wednesday in a rare show of dissent over President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s military cutbacks.

Lt. Gen. Igor Sergeyev, deputy chief of Soviet rocket forces, told the weekly Moscow News that a mass pullout from Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary would upset parity with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and overturn Soviet military calculations.

“We will lose ground and be that much closer to danger. If someone loses in parity, then someone else naturally gains,” he said in an interview.

“Forthcoming changes in the Warsaw Pact, of course, mean losses for us from the military standpoint. All the theoretical discussions about changing from a military to a political pact are cold comfort. It’s playing with words.”

Sergeyev’s comments contrast with the general support expressed for Gorbachev’s planned deep cuts in the level of troop deployments and military spending.

The Soviet Union agreed at a meeting last week in Ottawa to reduce Soviet and U.S. troop levels in Central Europe to 195,000 each--with Washington allowed to keep an extra 30,000.