Soviets Raise Obstacles to New Arms Pacts

The Soviet Union in recent weeks has been backing away from or qualifying a number of important arms control deals, including the agreement for a ceiling of 195,000 U.S. and Soviet troops in Central Europe, U.S. officials say.

Officials and non-government experts blame the problem on a new assertiveness by the Soviet military. Worried about the nation’s security as its East European alliance crumbles and a unified Germany emerges, the Red Army has pushed Moscow to reopen old issues that were considered settled and raised new ones to bedevil the negotiators.

Unless Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev “cracks the whip soon,” as one official put it last week, the new Soviet positions could prevent him and President Bush from agreeing in principle on the START nuclear arms reduction treaty at their May 30 summit meeting. They could also prolong negotiations on the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) talks beyond this year.

Gorbachev and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze have tended to dismiss the new obstacles, many of which arose during Shevardnadze’s visit here two weeks ago, as minor problems that crop up inevitably in the closing phases of negotiations. But U.S. officials are concerned that they may present serious new difficulties, and they fear that the rising influence of the Soviet Defense Ministry may not be a passing phenomenon.

“A danger to Gorbachev exists in the potential coalescing of three very unhappy groups in the Soviet Union,” explained a senior U.S. analyst. “The nomenklatura (privileged party and government bureaucrats); Russian nationalists, particularly in the non-Russian republics, and the military.

“He’s being extra careful now not to alienate any of them, taking greater account particularly of the military’s positions,” the official added. “It’s an open question how long it will last.”

“There’s no doubt that the CFE negotiations have been slowed down by German unification,” according to Harvard Prof. Joseph Nye, an arms control expert, who said that the Soviets see the CFE as their best means for controlling German armament. “It’s implausible that they would set limits on U.S. and Soviet forces and not on the unified German army as well.”

Echoing this view, Jack Mendelsohn, deputy director of the private Arms Control Assn., said, “The Soviets don’t care where the question of unified Germany’s forces will be settled--at CFE or the ‘two-plus-four’ talks on German unification--but they want a handle on it as their first priority.”

Secretary of State James A. Baker III believed that all of the CFE troop issues had been settled in Ottawa in February. At that time, the superpowers agreed that each could station up to 195,000 soldiers in the central zone of Europe--mainly in East and West Germany--and the United States could have an extra 30,000 around the periphery of the Continent.

But later, the Soviets, at the CFE talks in Vienna, said the 195,000 figure was contingent on establishing an overall ceiling of all forces in the central region, not just those belonging to the United States and the Soviet Union. More specifically, they want a limit of 750,000 troops for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, including all West German, American and other allied troops, and an equal limit on the Warsaw Pact.

Moscow made little effort to hide the fact that its larger purpose was to use the CFE negotiations to set a limit on the forces of a unified Germany, which seems likely to become part of NATO.

The West German military consists of about 450,000 men and women, while East Germany has had about 150,000 in its armed forces, for an all-German total of about 600,000. The Soviets want a unified Germany to have no more than 300,000 troops.

When the United States complained that the Soviets were reneging on the Ottawa agreement, Moscow backtracked to accept the 195,000-troop ceiling as firm for U.S. and Soviet forces, U.S. officials said. But its CFE negotiators continue to insist that an overall ceiling of about 750,000 be set for each side in the central zone. The central region includes West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

The U.S. position is that such a ceiling should be negotiated in future CFE talks. U.S. officials also refuse to allow the issue of personnel to be raised within the “two-plus-four” talks because it would smack of imposing a troop ceiling on the unified Germany. The “two-plus-four” talks involve East and West Germany and the four major victors in World War II: Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union.

Nye argues that the German unification issue has also made the Soviet military skittish on the START treaty, which Bush and Gorbachev promised to initial at the May 30-June 3 summit and then formally sign later this year.

But most U.S. officials believe Soviet reversals on nuclear issues are more a reflection of the longstanding objections of the Soviet military to some START terms, as well as a new effort to limit the threat of U.S. cruise missiles.

The Soviet military has also complained that it was not represented at a key U.S.-Soviet meeting in Moscow in February when major Soviet concessions were made, according to knowledgeable U.S. officials.

In particular, it now insists that Marshall Sergei F. Akhromeyev, former army chief of staff but now Gorbachev’s military adviser, no longer represents the Soviet military chiefs when he attends negotiations, as he did in February.

In a small but embarrassing example, Akhromeyev in February agreed that U.S. B-52 bombers could carry up to 20 air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) but that they be counted against the START weapon ceilings as if they carried only 10 ALCMs. U.S. negotiators then proposed that Soviet bombers, which are somewhat smaller, could carry 16 ALCMs but only be counted as carrying eight weapons.

Akhromeyev waved aside the offer of 16, saying the Soviet bombers could carry a maximum of 12. Surprised, U.S. diplomats agreed that the number should be 12.

Now the Soviets want the right to carry up to 16 missiles on their bombers. The U.S. side will agree, since it proposed that number initially.

Other Soviet changes were not so benign. Until now, the Soviets had agreed that only those bombers equipped to carry nuclear weapons were to count against the START ceilings. Now the Soviets want to count all heavy bombers, including those configured to carry only conventional bombs or even electronic gear.

The Soviets also proposed for the first time that within the overall START ceiling of 6,000 nuclear weapons, a sub-ceiling be put on the number of ALCMs and ALCM-carrying bombers. Until now, START sub-ceilings have been only for the more dangerous ballistic missile warheads, and each side would have been free to opt for more ALCMS by cutting back on ballistic missile warheads.

The most egregious of the Soviet reversals, however, deals with sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs), which are not formally part of the START agreement but which are to be handled in parallel with that treaty.

In February, the Soviets agreed that each side would make a public declaration of how many weapons it intended to build. Now the Soviets want a legally binding agreement, a ceiling on the number that may be built and verification provisions to ensure compliance, U.S. officials said.

A final issue that could complicate the START talks in the next six weeks is the possibility of banning multiple warhead (or MIRV) missiles.

In a personal letter to Gorbachev last month, Bush proposed that land-based, mobile MIRV missiles be eliminated from both arsenals. This would eliminate the 10-warhead Soviet SS-24 missiles that are carried in railroad cars and prevent deployment of the 10-warhead U.S. MX missiles on railroad cars.

Gorbachev did not reject or accept the proposal per se, according to officials, although he noted that MIRV missiles on submarines are also mobile. “He just seemed to be saying, ‘Don’t complicate my life with this issue now,’ ” one U.S. official said.