Slavic Pact No Nuclear Threat, Its Leaders Say

The men who signed the Soviet Union’s political obituary tried on Monday to reassure President Bush and a concerned world that the awesome destructive forces of the Soviet nuclear arsenal will remain in sure hands.

“There is no threat of the spread of nuclear arms, there is no threat of destabilization,” said Andrei Kozyrev, the Russian Federation’s foreign minister.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s spokesman also sought to provide security assurances, saying that for now, at least, his boss remains the country’s “commander in chief,” with his finger on the Soviet nuclear trigger.

But one head of the new Slavic commonwealth, which was founded Sunday to supplant the Soviet Union, said a “three-button” system will be instituted to give Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin, Ukraine President Leonid M. Kravchuk and Belarus President Stanislav Shushkevich exclusive and joint command of the Soviet arsenal.

For military planners and statesmen alike, the shift of nuclear weapons control out of the Kremlin is a preoccupying development. The Bush Administration has reacted with concern, even alarm.

“While there’s opportunity, there’s also great danger associated with these transformations. . . ,” Secretary of State James A. Baker III said Sunday. “We really do run the risk, in my view at least, of seeing a situation created there not unlike what we have seen in Yugoslavia (but) with . . . nuclear weapons thrown in, and that could be (an) extraordinarily dangerous situation for Europe and for the rest of the world.”

Kozyrev told reporters on Monday that, after agreeing on formation of the commonwealth during a two-day meeting with Kravchuk and Shushkevich, Yeltsin telephoned Bush overnight to promise there will be no dispersal of the U.S.-estimated 27,000 nuclear missile warheads and other devices possessed by the Soviet armed forces.

“We greatly respect President Bush and believe this is necessary, because we are talking here about a nuclear superpower,” Kozyrev said.

It was only later that the Russian leader telephoned Gorbachev to inform him of the creation of the “Commonwealth of Independent States,” Kozyrev said.

Bush and other Western leaders have been pressing for security guarantees, in exchange for ultimate recognition of republics such as the Ukraine as independent states. And even if Moscow’s political role collapses, U.S. officials want to be able to deal with a “center” on nuclear weapons.

“Our position has been that we would prefer to see the nuclear responsibilities stay under a single, unified command,” White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said Monday. “Their safety can best be provided for through a unified command.” As for Yeltsin, he “told President Bush that he was equally concerned about the safety of nuclear weapons and assured us that the matter would be handled responsibly,” Fitzwater said.

In Kozyrev’s words, Bush reacted “positively” to the guarantees.

The Russia-Ukraine-Belarus agreement calls in general terms for those republics to “preserve a unified command of a common military-strategic space and united control over nuclear weapons.” But one of the greatest mysteries of the accord reached at Viskuli, Belarus, is how that “united command” actually would function.

The bulk of the Soviet nuclear arsenal is deployed in Yeltsin’s Russia, but there are weapons systems, such as long-range nuclear missiles, strategic bombers, and tactical nuclear devices, in Ukraine and Belarus, as well as a fourth republic, Kazakhstan.

Gorbachev’s deputy spokesman, Alexander Likhotal, said Monday night that “at this point, the nuclear arms are controlled by the president of the Soviet Union and the general staff of the Soviet military forces.”

But Kravchuk said such a state of affairs will not last. According to the Ukrainian leader, Gorbachev--who may have no job left under the new commonwealth--will be stripped of the Soviet equivalent of the “football,” what Americans call the system of codes and electronics needed to launch a nuclear strike. In the United States, the President controls these.

During the August coup, however, there was considerable Western speculation as to how the equivalent Soviet system works, with some experts theorizing that, for example, not only Gorbachev but also a top military leader needed to provide top-secret data to launch a nuclear attack.

Officials on Monday did not discuss such specifics. But the Soviet system, Kravchuk said in Kiev, now will require a unanimous, simultaneous decision by the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus to launch an attack.

“Security over nuclear weapons will be three times greater than today,” Kravchuk told a news conference. “The ‘black briefcase’ will be held by the three that have nuclear forces. The ‘buttons’ will be interconnected and will work only if all three are pressed. This increases controls and guarantees over the non-use of nuclear weapons.”

He offered no time line for the “three-button” system to be put into effect, and, in fact, in the past he has said that a full-scale overhaul of the Soviet nuclear command and control system would be prohibitively costly. Kravchuk also said he that he expects the leadership of Kazakhstan, the fourth republic of the “former Soviet Union” where nuclear weapons are based, to join the commonwealth.

But at least on the strategic security issue, Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, marked his distance from the Slavic leaders. After leaving a Kremlin meeting with Yeltsin and Gorbachev on Monday, Nazarbayev told reporters he wants all of the nuclear weapons in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and his republic controlled from a single center. He did not mention multiple buttons. “It is about time we settled this problem and stopped threatening the world,” Nazarbayev said.

The various accords signed by the Slavic republics over the weekend commit them to “striving to liquidate all nuclear armaments, to have total and complete disarmament under strict international control.” The republics also pledged to observe all international treaties and commitments entered into by the “former Soviet Union.”

That language seems straightforward enough. But Dr. Hans Blix, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters in Stockholm that the evident demise of the Soviet Union poses confusing questions about the obligations of the member republics, for example, under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signed by Moscow. “If the Soviet Union does not exist as a state any longer, who succeeds it,” along with the United States and Britain, as a trustee of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, asked Blix.