Moving Back To Square One

• Share

Reagan and Andropov joust over arms control

The shadow of Flight 007 still darkens relations between the two superpowers, but last week both Ronald Reagan and Yuri Andropov shifted their attention to a matter of far more compelling urgency and long-run significance: the menace of nuclear weapons in Europe.

Despite the Soviet Union's egregious act of brutality in the Asian skies, the current session of talks on Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) got under way a scant five days after the 269 people aboard the Korean Air Lines jet were killed by Soviet missiles. With good reason: if Soviet and American negotiators do not reach agreement by the end of the year, the U.S. and NATO plan to counter the Soviet SS-20 missiles targeted at Western Europe with an equally formidable array of Pershing II and cruise missiles. And so far, discouragingly little progress has been made in the 22 months since the inception of the INF parleys.

While the shooting down of the aircraft had set back the Soviet Union's "peace offensive" in Europe, Reagan was still under pressure from NATO allies to show more flexibility in the INF talks. He ordered his arms-control negotiators to place a new offer on the table and planned to describe it in an address to the United Nations General Assembly early this week. In a visit to Voice of America headquarters, Reagan turned his usual Saturday radio broadcast into an unusual worldwide pitch for his arms-control proposals. His words were beamed into Asia, Europe and Africa and were to be translated into 42 languages.

Andropov, on the other hand, warned legislators in Bonn against the planned NATO missile deployment in West Germany, arguing, "You do not want the threat of war to emanate from the territory of your country, a war that would be a hell for the whole of mankind." Communist Party officials from Soviet-bloc nations were summoned to Moscow for a conference on ways to prevent the Pershing II and cruise deployment.

Tensions between the superpowers, at the same time, were mounting over the Middle East. With U.S. Marines still under fire from Druze rebels and Syrian guns in the hills above Beirut, American warships grew more active in supporting the Lebanese government's beleaguered forces (see WORLD). Both Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz accused the Soviets of being involved in Syria's largely successful attempts to frustrate international peace-keeping efforts in the faction-torn nation. Said a White House official: "We've seen a significantly increased likelihood of a U.S.-Soviet military confrontation in the Middle East. We are watching the situation carefully."

Friction over arms control, however, posed an even greater long-term threat to any improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations. The two rivals not only eyed each other across the INF bargaining table but were engaged in a stretch drive to win the support of uneasy Europeans, especially in West Germany. The first nine of a planned force of 108 Pershing II missiles are to be deployed in West Germany on a still undisclosed date in December. Peace groups have scheduled massive demonstrations against the deployment for Oct. 22 in Hamburg, Bonn, Stuttgart and West Berlin.