Gorbachev’s Nuclear-Reduction Plan
Highlights of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s announcement of major nuclear-arms reductions, in response to President Bush’s proposals of Sept. 27:
UNILATERAL MOVES
* Eliminate nuclear artillery and nuclear warheads from tactical rockets.
* Move nuclear-tipped Zenith missiles to a central base and destroy some of them.
* Remove all tactical nuclear weapons from ships and from multipurpose submarines.
* Remove heavy bombers similar to the U.S. long-range B-52 and B-1 bombers from battle alert and keep their nuclear weapons at warehouses.
* Remove from battle-alert status 503 intercontinental ballistic missiles, including 134 missiles with multiple warheads.
* Stop development of a “modified nuclear short-range missile for the Soviet heavy bombers.”
* Keep mobile missiles stationary.
* Impose a one-year moratorium on nuclear testing and ask nations to follow suit.
* Stop Soviet development of “a mobile small-dimension intercontinental ballistic missile.”
BILATERAL MOVES
* Suggest that the Soviet Union and United States liquidate naval tactical nuclear weapons.
* Suggest that both sides remove from forward military tactical aviation units all nuclear weapons, bombs and rockets and place them at centralized warehouses.
* Negotiate further radical reductions in offensive strategic weapons, cutting their number by about half.
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