Byrd Says O.K.

SALT II gets needed boost

It is official. Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd, who has spent months in public doubting and questioning, is now backing the SALT II treaty. To reporters crowded into a Senate conference room last week, the powerful West Virginia Democrat declared that the strategic arms pact with Moscow "is in our national interest" and could "help diminish the potential for nuclear destruction." Though widely anticipated, this clear-cut endorsement gave SALT II a badly needed boost. Without Byrd's active support, the treaty would have little chance of winning the two-thirds vote required for Senate approval. To be sure, passage still remains uncertain. But now Byrd will be using his proven talents as a cloakroom cajoler and persuader on the undecided Senators; among them he hopes to find the dozen or so additional votes that SALT II seems to need.

For this campaign, Byrd has prepared himself extensively. He says that he has exhaustively studied the seven-year history of the SALT II negotiations and has read every line of the proposed treaty, a 209-page secret report about the ability of the U.S. to monitor Soviet compliance with SALT, and transcripts of the three Senate committees that have been hearing testimony on the pact. He has also discussed SALT's details and geopolitical significance with, among others, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger, heads of several NATO countries, and, during a special summer visit to the Soviet Union, Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev. With this background, Byrd expects to be able to advise those Senators who may be unsure of the issues. And as majority leader, he can be expected to pressure, and protect politically, those who may waver.

As part of his strategy, Byrd is demanding that "certain provisions" be included in the Senate resolution approving the treaty. Unlike the "killer" amendments that are being proposed by SALT's critics, Byrd's measures would require no new bargaining with Moscow. But they could eliminate some ambiguities in the treaty that have been troubling a number of Senators. Among other things, Byrd wants the ratifying resolution to state explicitly that Senate approval would be required for any extension, beyond its scheduled expiration at the end of 1981, of the protocol that is to limit such key weapons as the mobile intercontinental ballistic missile and the ground-or sea-launched cruise missile. Another Byrd provision would give legally binding force to the personal assurances made to Carter by Brezhnev that the Soviet Union will produce no more than 30 of its new supersonic Backfire bombers per year.

Meantime, the SALT II draft that was signed by Carter and Brezhnev last June in Vienna was slowly wending its way through the Senate's complex ratification machinery. The Foreign Relations Committee's nine Democrats and six Republicans last week continued ''marking up''--going over line by line--the proposed resolution of ratification. During the ''mark-up,'' amendments can be introduced and voted upon by committee members. Among the most notable offered last week were several by Minority Leader Howard Baker that dealt with the Soviet monopoly on large-scale ICBMS.

One of his proposals would have given the U.S. the right, denied in the SALT II draft, to deploy ICBMS as large as the U.S.S.R.'s huge SS-18. The Kremlin would have balked at such a treaty revision, and that made Baker's measure a killer amendment. For this reason, the committee rejected it, but only by 8 to 7.

Because the Foreign Relations Com mittee is regarded as more pro-SALT than the full Senate, this razor-thin margin was seen as evidence of the rough time SALT II still faces. Indeed, some analysts feel that the pact's toughest and most in transigent opponents have been holding their fire, waiting for the proceedings to move to the Senate floor, probably around Thanksgiving.

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