Soviets Call Halt to Underground Tests for 4 Months

The Soviet Union said Saturday it will suspend all underground nuclear tests for four months in response to domestic protests.

Deputy Prime Minister Igor S. Belousov told the Supreme Soviet, the country’s legislature, that the Kremlin had made the decision in a bid to find “an acceptable solution to the social and economic problems involved in the holding of nuclear tests.”

Earlier this week, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev failed to win U.S. support for a total test ban in a proposal sent to a U.N. conference on nuclear testing. U.S. officials said tests are essential to keep U.S. weaponry effective.

In the past two years, a powerful anti-test movement has emerged in Kazakhstan in Central Asia, where the Soviet army’s main testing grounds are in the Gegelen Hills by the city of Semipalatinsk.

The outspoken new president and Communist Party chief of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, opposed tests in the republic and the military switched them late last year to the Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya. This sparked strong protests from people in the north of the Soviet Union and from Scandinavian countries.

In 1986 and 1987, the Soviet Union observed a 19-month test freeze when Gorbachev sought to build up his credentials as a peacemaker, but he failed to persuade then-President Ronald Reagan to follow suit.