Arms Dance

A glimmer of hope Watching the U.S. and the Soviet Union decide whether or not to resume arms-control talks is a little like watching a thermonuclear version of "she-loves-me, she-loves-me-not." The rhetoric seems to vary with the day and the mood. Still, last week some rays of progress emerged from the murk of suspicion and ambiguity. General Edward Rowny, the chief U.S. negotiator at the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), began the week on what appeared to be an upbeat note by declaring that if the Soviets return to the bargaining table, "we are now in a posi-tion to make a breakthrough." He suggested that the U.S. might trade some of its edge in bombers and air-launched cruise missiles for Soviet cutbacks in its lead in heavy land-based missiles. He also indicated that the U.S. might be willing to merge START with the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) talks, which deal with medium-range missiles in Europe, if the Soviet Union proposed such a move. The next day, however, Richard Burt, the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, dampened hopes by saying that the U.S. had no plans for either the "tradeoff" or the arms-talk merger. Soviet rhetoric also mixed bombast and hints of accommodation.

While insisting that "the imperialist" U.S. is "the main threat to peace," Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko obliquely indicated that the Soviets might be willing to go along with a merger of START and INF talks. Such a step would allow the Soviets to slide around their vow not to resume INF talks as long as the U.S. was deploying Pershing II missiles in Western Europe. An even more promising feeler came from an unnamed "high-ranking Soviet official," widely assumed to be Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin, who suggested to the Boston Globe that the two powers seek a quick "interim agreement" on the less controversial elements of arms control while postponing for the moment the many tougher far-reaching questions. Meanwhile, there were countercharges that both sides were violating existing treaties. Two weeks ago the U.S. accused the Soviets of four and "probably" three more violations, including the use of chemical warfare in Laos and Afghanistan, and of building a radar system that could be used for antiballistic missiles, which were limited by the 1972 ABM treaty. Last week the Soviets retaliated with similar allegations, including the claim that the U.S. was building an ABM radar system of its own. Arms-control experts said the charges were actually quite moderate. Indeed, in the looking-glass world of nuclear negotiations, the muted accusations were seen as a faint signal that both sides wanted to get some form of arms-control talks going.