In Moscow, Maybes amid the Nos

A Soviet spokesman's candid views on relations with the U.S.

It was a bad week for relations between Moscow and Washington. The official Soviet press denounced President Reagan's call for a "crusade" against totalitarianism in his speech before Britain's Parliament. After the outbreak of war in the Middle East, Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev sent Reagan an implicit warning over the hot line.

To assess the current state of Soviet-American affairs, TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott had a two-hour interview in Moscow last week with Leonid Zamyatin, a member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party and Brezhnev's principal spokesman. Zamyatin harshly and predictably attacked U.S. policy in the Middle East, criticized Reagan's position on strategic arms negotiations and decried the use offeree -- as if the Soviets did not use it when it suited them. But in addition to the familiar Soviet positions, Zamyatin also sent a number of potentially hopeful signals. He indicated that the Soviets are very much interested in a Reagan-Brezhnev summit, that Moscow might be willing to consider cuts in its arsenal of land-based ballistic missiles if the U.S. would agree to give up some of its airborne and sea-based weapons, and that the Kremlin explicitly accepts Reagan's recent proposal that the expired SALT I and unratified SALT II limitations should remain in effect while arms talks are under way. Highlights from the Zamyatin interview:

On Israel's invasion of Lebanon: President Brezhnev sent a letter over the hot line to President Reagan, and we have received an answer. We are seriously concerned about the developments. If the Arab countries do not join forces and repulse the aggressor--and, of course, they need tune to do so because of the unexpectedness of the attack--then at some point in the future the conflict will expand. In short, we stand on the eve of a new Arab-Israeli war. The superpowers have got to head it off, just as we stopped the massacre in 1973. Our fleet is standing by in the Mediterranean. So is the American fleet. Both are moving in the same direction, toward Lebanon. Doesn't this situation compel us to consider what needs to be done to put an end to this conflict?

What is happening now in the Falklands and in the Middle East is a reminder that we could find ourselves facing each other as adversaries not directly, but somewhere on the periphery, without our meaning for it to happen or even knowing that it was coming.

On Reagan's speech in London: It was propagandistic and ideological. If the Soviet Union and the U.S. want to conduct negotiations on a whole complex of questions that concern, literally, the fate of the earth, then this process has to be based on a certain amount of mutual trust. Speeches like Reagan's undermine that trust and create new tensions between our nations. We are not suggesting that we should love each other. We are not expecting Reagan to turn sentimental about us. We are not going to turn him into a friend of the Soviet Union any more than he is going to make capitalists out of us. But since he is the head of the U.S. Government, with which we have relations and must conduct negotiations, we put aside emotions and propaganda and try to get down to business.

Reagan talks about using force in the ideological struggle. We do not include within the framework of the ideological struggle an attempt to impose our ideas on the U.S. by force or the threat of force. That is the difference between Reagan's concept and our own.

On Reagan's claim that the Soviet Union faces economic crisis and eventual collapse: The difficulties we are experiencing could arise in any state, regardless of its social system. We have had terrible rainstorms, long spells of cold weather and three years of drought. Not even the U.S. can be sure of avoiding this sort of bad luck.

On Reagan's "zero-option" proposal, to eliminate all intermediate-range nuclear missiles from NATO and the Warsaw Pact: Reagan's slogan here is no missiles on either side--no Soviet SS-20s, no American Pershing Us [or ground-launched cruise missiles]. We could do the same thing. Tomorrow we could come out with our own program for deploying Soviet missiles near the U.S., say in the north somewhere, and then offer not to go ahead with that deployment if the U.S. would give up the MX [America's still undeployed ICBM]. That is fine as propaganda, perhaps. But there is already a balance offerees in Europe. We have our missiles and you have yours, on submarines and bombers, which can reach our territory.

On strategic arms negotiations: We cannot take as our starting point a requirement that the Soviet Union reduce its strategic nuclear missile power by three times as much as the U.S. The American approach excludes cruise missiles from the calculations. How can we ignore that the U.S. plans to deploy 3,000 cruise missiles that will be able to penetrate our antiaircraft defenses? And at the same time, the U.S. is demanding that we reduce the principal weapons on our side, land-based missiles. We favor significant--I repeat significant--reductions. But we will never accept any proposal meant to weaken our security while it strengthens American security.

On the mutual observance of SALT I and SALT II: If the U.S. will observe SALT I and SALT II, then the Soviet Union, to the same degree, will abide by the provisions of those agreements. Although formally neither side has ratified SALT II, the treaties have been accepted by silent consent.

On the strategic balance between the superpowers: It is primitive for people to claim that the Soviet Union has surpassed the U.S. In some areas we are ahead, and in others you are. In the aggregate, both sides have accumulated so much weaponry that there is no need to develop new systems. The stockpiles are so great that they can already destroy all life on earth. We are not going into negotiations from a position of weakness, but from a position of equality. If that equality is upset, then we will not be able to negotiate, because one side will think it can impose its will on the other.

On a Brezhnev-Reagan summit in the fall: The more acute the situation, the more important that there be a dialogue. No matter how strained relations are, the thin thread of dialogue must not be broken, because without this thread, we will lose contact altogether, and events will get even more out of hand. qed

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