Concession or Propaganda?

By Russ Hoyle

Andropov plays a clever but ambiguous card in the missile game

The very words were calculated to convey an impression of Soviet flexibility and weary impatience with the U.S. "The Soviet Union has stated its readiness not to have in Europe a single missile and a single plane more than possessed today by NATO countries," said Soviet Leader Yuri Andropov. "We are told that in this event the Soviet Union would have more missile nuclear warheads. All right, we are prepared to reach agreement on the equality of nuclear potentials in Europe, both as regards delivery vehicles and warheads, with due account, of course, for the corresponding armaments of Britain and France." With that reasonable-sounding sally last week, Andropov once again put the Reagan Administration on the defensive in the escalating propaganda war over the projected deployment of U.S. Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe beginning late this year. Conceded a senior White House official: "It was a well-played card."

Speaking at a reception in Moscow for East German Leader Erich Honecker, Andropov also warned that if the U.S. missiles are deployed, "a chain reaction is inevitable." Said he: "The U.S.S.R., the German Democratic Republic, the other Warsaw Treaty countries will be compelled to take countermeasures." If the Andropov proposal was consistent with past maneuvering in the missile game, combining offers of flexibility with threats of escalation, it nevertheless appeared to suggest that the Soviet Union was inching toward a more conciliatory stance in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) talks scheduled to resume in Geneva next week. For the first time since those negotiations began in October 1980, Moscow sounded ready to discuss numbers of warheads rather than missiles.

Stung by passage of a congressional nuclear-freeze resolution, President Reagan took pains to describe the possible softening of the Soviet position as "encouraging." Said he: "We're going to give this serious consideration, as we do any proposal that they make." But Reagan added that a fuller analysis of the ambiguity-ridden Soviet plan would have to await the return to Geneva of U.S. Negotiator Paul Nitze.

There was sound reason for Reagan's guarded response. Andropov's remarks reflected no change in the Soviet demand that British and French nuclear forces be included in the INF arithmetic, a possibility long ruled out by Washington and its NATO partners. Britain and France have always contended that their comparatively small forces are national deterrents that are incapable of defending all of Western Europe or of threatening the Soviet Union with a first strike and, hence, should remain outside any discussions between the U.S. and the Soviets. While praising the Soviet willingness to focus on warheads "as a sign of progress," the State Department said that the U.S. would stand by its commitment to exclude British and French nuclear forces from the Geneva negotiations. U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger went so far as to suggest that the tactic might be designed to bring the INF talks "to a halt."

The response of West European leaders to Andropov's proposal was by turns hopeful and ambivalent. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl welcomed the latest Soviet move as offering promise for a U.S.-Soviet missile agreement this year. British Foreign Secretary Francis Pym described Andropov's remarks as "a step in the right direction. It is a very modest move; they are still taking a very hard line." French President Franc,ois Mitterrand reaffirmed his nation's determination to be excluded from the Geneva talks. Said he: "This Soviet demand is very old. I will remain deaf." The Paris daily Le Monde headlined the Andropov announcement with a question: CONCESSION OR PROPAGANDA? The paper's assessment: probably propaganda.

Most Western analysts saw the continuing Soviet attempt to bring Britain and France into the negotiations as an effort to divide the alliance. Said U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle: "All the Soviet proposals have had one common characteristic--they would leave the U.S. with zero nuclear forces in Europe, and they would leave the Soviet Union with thousands of nuclear warheads on Soviet missiles." In the NATO view, a failure by the U.S. to counter the 243 triple-warhead SS-20s now aimed at Western Europe would "decouple" the U.S. and its West European allies by indicating that the U.S. would no longer risk its own cities for the defense of Europe.

Andropov's offer was seen as a response to President Reagan's interim proposal, which calls for an unspecified reduction of proposed U.S. missiles in exchange for a cut in the number of existing Soviet SS-20s. But Andropov laid out the Soviet posture so loosely that any real assessment will have to depend on how Soviet negotiators fill in the blanks at Geneva. Some of the ambiguities:

> What would happen to excess SS-20s, all mobile, now deployed in the European part of the Soviet Union if reductions were agreed upon? The Soviets have reserved the option of moving the extra missiles to Asia. The U.S., at minimum, would probably insist that they be dismantled and destroyed, so that the missiles could not be moved back to Europe in a crisis.

> Is the Soviet Union, by agreeing to count warheads, trying to prevent modernization of the independent British and French nuclear forces? By the early 1990s, Britain plans to replace its 64 Polaris missiles with 32 U.S.-built Trident submarine-launched ballistic missiles with eight to ten independently targetable re-entry warheads each. The French, similarly, are in the process of replacing their 98 single-warhead missiles with weapons that can carry up to six warheads.

> Would the Soviet Union respond to the deployment of U.S. missiles by stationing new ballistic nuclear missiles in East Germany? Andropov may have been hinting as much when he singled out East Germany for participation in any East bloc "countermeasures."

In Moscow, meanwhile, rumors of a continuing power struggle resurfaced last week when Andropov's presumed chief rival, Politburo Member Konstantin Chernenko, 71, failed to show up at Lenin's Mausoleum for the May Day festivities. His office explained that Chernenko, who has not been seen in public since March 30, was suffering from pneumonia. Andropov, wearing tinted glasses, seemed tired and frail; two days later, when he presented Honecker with the Order of Lenin, his hands trembled, further fueling rumors that he is not well.

Andropov, however, was eager to encourage speculation that the Soviets are not prepared to let the Geneva talks stagnate. Says U.S. Arms Control Expert William Hyland: "Andropov has given the negotiators some room to move about." The latest Soviet offer, indeed, was an effective ploy in a game in which each superpower wants to be the last to make an offer, not the last to issue a rejection. --ByRussHoyle. Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof/Moscow and Strobe Talbott/Washington

With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof/Moscow, Strobe Talbott/Washington This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.