Laying Down a Tough Line

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

As George Shultz and Andrei Gromyko arrived in Geneva this past weekend, one question hanging over their eagerly awaited two-day meeting was this: What could the U.S. Secretary of State find to say that the Soviet Foreign Minister, who is fluent in English, could not have learned in advance from the American press? Well before the talks were scheduled to begin on Monday, the White House spelled out in detail the stand that President Reagan had instructed Shultz to take. The key element: the U.S. would not even consider any slowing of its efforts to develop a Star Wars antimissile defense. Indeed, it would attempt to convince the Soviets that they should shift from offensive to defensive weapons.

In other respects also, the U.S. position appeared so hard-line as to raise considerable doubt that new arms-control talks could make much progress, even if Shultz and Gromyko fulfilled the stated purpose of their talks and agreed on procedures for resuming substantive negotiations. As outlined last week in "background" briefings by "senior Administration officials" whose identity was hardly a secret--National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane put part of one briefing on the record--Shultz's instructions were to make three presentations:

-- A new set of negotiations should be established to cover all types of offensive nuclear weapons. In effect, this would merge two sets of talks that broke off at the end of 1983: the strategic arms talks (START), concerning intercontinental missiles and warheads, and the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces talks (INF), on missiles in Europe. The U.S. presumably would renew its proposals for deep cuts in strategic weapons and roughly equal numbers of medium-range missiles.

-- The U.S. in turn would agree to hold separate discussions on the issue that concerns the Soviets the most--defensive systems like those envisioned under Reagan's Star Wars plan (see following story). But this would amount to putting Star Wars on the bargaining table only in the most technical sense; McFarlane insisted that the Strategic Defense Initiative, as it is formally called, "is not a bargaining chip," and the President unmistakably wants to proceed full speed ahead on it. Reagan met on Friday with twelve Senate and 14 House leaders to press the case for doing so. In the Administration's view, talks on defensive weapons would in effect consist of a series of American lectures on the virtues of having "each side turn to greater reliance on defensive systems that don't threaten anyone," in the words of a senior Administration official. The White House also ruled out any thought of offering a moratorium on testing of antisatellite weapons as a concession to get bargaining started. A moratorium might eventually be negotiated, said Administration briefers, only as part of a "package deal."

-- The U.S. will strongly protest alleged Soviet violations of existing arms- control treaties. In particular, Shultz was supposed to tell Gromyko that the giant radar station the Soviets are building near Krasnoyarsk in Siberia is "a dagger pointed at the heart of arms control." The U.S. considers the installation to be a step toward development of a nationwide system of antiballistic-missile defenses forbidden by a 1972 treaty. An Administration official elaborated that the U.S. must be assured of Moscow's compliance with past treaties if it is to have any "confidence we can conclude a satisfactory agreement in the future."

All this clashed strongly with known elements of the Soviet position. Though the Kremlin has talked much less than the White House about arms-control negotiations, its views are no secret. The only kind of deal in which it has indicated any interest is one that would kill Star Wars in return for cuts in offensive missiles and warheads. Gromyko was also expected to demand again a ban on antisatellite tests.

Thus, the Geneva talks seemed unlikely to result in any breakthrough. That prospect did not displease Pentagon hawks. Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle predicted, "The Shultz-Gromyko talks are going to produce this mouse, and the mouse is going to scurry across the stage, and the press is going to ask, 'Well, was that it?' "

The surprise was that the Pentagon's position on preparing for the Geneva talks prevailed, so far as is known, without any top-level dissent. The usual procedure would have been to prepare a report for Reagan listing several options for his decision. But just before the New Year holiday, McFarlane flew to Palm Springs, Calif., to present the vacationing President with a twelve- page paper detailing an Administration "consensus." When Reagan met for an hour on New Year's Day with Shultz, McFarlane and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, he approved the paper as a set of instructions. Shultz's concurrence appeared to indicate that his own views on arms control are considerably more conservative than those of some of his State Department subordinates. Several of them had strenuously argued that the U.S. should indeed try to use Star Wars as a bargaining chip and should offer early to negotiate a ban on antisatellite tests.

The Administration recognized, however, that its position could be tough to sell to American allies, some of whom fear that Star Wars could accelerate the arms race, and even to some segments of U.S. public opinion. Hence the "background" briefings, which are a standard technique for explaining a policy that the Government is not willing to proclaim formally. Who is doing the talking is easy to guess, however, especially when the briefings are widely publicized in advance, as McFarlane's was. Certainly Moscow should have no trouble figuring it out; the briefings are open to the foreign press, including the Soviets' TASS correspondent.

The Administration seemed to be preparing the public for a lack of major results from the Geneva meeting. A senior Administration official (promptly identified by some newspapers as McFarlane) stressed that any new arms-control negotiations would be "extremely complex" and would take Washington and Moscow down "a long road."

With reporting by Johanna McGeary/Washington