THE START OF SALT

We must make a determined effort not only to limit the buildup of strategic arms, but to reverse it.

--Richard Nixon

A positive outcome of the talks would undoubtedly help improve Soviet-American relations and preserve and strengthen the peace. --Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny

WITH suitable benedictions from their leaders and the best wishes of peaceable men everywhere, U.S. and Russian negotiators this week meet in Helsinki. They are coming to the Finnish capital to start talks on the most vital-and sensitive disarmament issue ever negotiated between the two sides. The object of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) is to find a way for both sides to agree on a plan that will limit, and perhaps some day reduce their vast nuclear arsenals.

In 1963, the U.S. and Soviets agreed on a limited test-ban treaty that halted their nuclear tests in the atmosphere, thus reducing the worldwide peril from radioactive fallout. In 1968, they jointly backed the nonproliferation treaty aimed at halting the spread of atomic weaponry beyond the present five nuclear powers (Britain, China and France in addition to the U.S. and U.S.S.R.). The U.S. and the Soviet Union also signed treaties that ban nuclear weapons from outer space and from Antarctica, and they have drawn up one protecting the ocean floor. Yet not until now have the two superpowers touched upon the most fundamental nuclear threat, which is their own armories.

President Johnson had hoped to start arms-reduction talks with the Soviets in the summer of 1968. He was forced to cancel the discussions because of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. For months President Nixon has pushed for the start of nuclear negotiations, but the Soviets demurred. On a visit to the U.S. last month, Soviet Physicist Pyotr L. Kapitsa, by speaking out against ABMs, indicated that Russia was having much the same sort of squabble between hawks and doves over the issue of arms limitation that has been going on in the U.S.

One reason why both sides were eager to start at this particular time is that the superpowers have reached a delicate balance of terror. After a crash program to install more S59 and SS-11 land-based missiles, the Soviets apparently feel that they have reached parity with the U.S. Even so, each side realizes that it does not possess sufficient first-strike power to render the other side incapable of a nuclear riposte that would gravely damage the attacker. The Soviets have about 1,350 land-based intercontinental missiles, compared with 1,054 U.S. ICBMs. The Russian missiles are larger, but the U.S.'s are more accurate. While the U.S. has 41 Polaris submarines, each of which carries 16 missiles, Russia has a fleet of only nine such submarines. The U.S. has nearly 600 strategic bombers v. 150 Russian planes. The two powers have thus achieved a nuclear standoff in which the U.S. has more warheads, while the Soviets lead in megatonnage.

Behind SALT is the urgency to achieve a halt in the development of nuclear weaponry before one side or the other achieves another technical breakthrough that will start a new spiral in the arms race. Both are now working on MIRVs, missiles carrying clusters of independently targetable warheads, which would multiply the destructive ability of each ICBM. The U.S. is probably ahead in MIRV development and could deploy the weapon by late 1970. In ABM, on the other hand, the Soviet Union has ringed Moscow with some missiles, while the U.S. is still in the research stage on its Safeguard ABM system.

American Caution. The two negotiating teams will meet alternately at the U.S. and Soviet embassies in Helsinki. No agenda has been fixed for the talks. There was some speculation that the Soviets might make a bold proposal, such as an immediate freeze on the development and deployment of nuclear weaponry. The American team is definitely under instructions to proceed cautiously and try to find out what the other side has in mind before making any offers of its own.

U.S. caution is a product of the long debate over the desirability of offering any concessions to the Soviets. As justification for its ABM program and for the testing and deployment of MIRVs, the Pentagon insists that the Soviets are striving for a first-strike superiority in missiles rather than simple parity with the U.S. On the other hand, as the U.S. delegates were about to leave for Helsinki, Secretary of State Rogers delivered a speech that had full White House approval. In a rebuttal of the Pentagon point of view, Rogers said: "The risks in seeking an agreement seem to be manageable, insurable and reasonable ones to run. They seem less dangerous than the risk of open-ended arms competition." Some members of Congress have also urged immediate cutbacks. Senator Edmund Muskie last week reiterated a demand for a six-month unilateral halt in testing. Meanwhile Senator Edward Brooke has collected 42 Senate signatures on a resolution urging a mutual test halt.

Guarded Forecasts. Both sides have topflight delegations. The six-man Soviet team is led by Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Semyonov, 58, the No. 3 man in the Soviet foreign office. His chief political aide is Georgy Kornienko, a Russian "America watcher." The others are scientists and generals. In view of the Soviet fetish for secrecy, the appearance of technicians in Helsinki was taken by some Westerners as an indication that the Kremlin plans to bargain seriously.

The U.S. delegation is equally professional. Heading it is Gerard C. Smith, 55, Nixon's choice for Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Smith is a Republican lawyer who went to work for the Atomic Energy Commission during the Eisenhower Administration, later became John Foster Dulles' special assistant for atomic affairs. The group also includes Arms Control Deputy Director Philip J. Farley, 53, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul H. Nitze, 62, and Physicist Harold Brown, 42, who was Johnson's Air Force Secretary. The political adviser is Llewellyn E. Thompson Jr., 65, twice ambassador to Moscow and now Washington's ablest interpreter of Russian moods and nuances.

The American delegation will stay at a resort hotel called Fisherman's Hut, which overlooks the Bay of Finland. At present, the Americans hope to probe Soviet intentions for a couple of weeks and then return to Washington for instructions before serious talks.

Disarmament experts make only guarded estimates about how long it might take to reach an arms agreement --if indeed it can be reached at all. Though there are compelling reasons for a relatively rapid progress in SALT, experienced negotiators point out that the nonproliferation treaty, which was not nearly so complicated, consumed some four years of negotiation.

West Germany's Chancellor Willy Brandt last week pledged that he would sign the nonproliferation treaty this week. West Germany will be the 92nd nation to put its signature to the treaty requiring nuclear have-not nations to refrain from developing atomic weapons. Since West Germany is the most important of the "threshold nations" that could develop nuclear weaponry, the hope was that Bonn's action would spur other nations to sign the treaty. The results were mixed. While the Japanese said they would eventually sign up, the Indians still refused on the grounds that the treaty would prevent them from developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes through their own efforts.

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