World: SALT: The Race to Halt the Arms Race

AMID the baroque splendors of Vienna's Belvedere Palace, U.S. and Soviet negotiators this week will open the long-awaited Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). They are possibly the most vital negotiations between the two superpowers since Yalta; London's Institute for Strategic Studies last week called them "the most important arms conference in history." At their initial get-together, the delegates will move at a leisurely pace that seems entirely appropriate to a conference that may well continue for several years. In rooms graced by red marble columns and canvases of voluptuous nudes, they will exchange formal greetings and sample champagne and canapes. Despite the casual air, however, the delegates realize that they will have little time to waste. Unless the two nations move quickly they may very well miss an opportunity to prevent the nuclear arms race from taking a quantum leap.

No Return. The outlook is far from optimistic. Both the U.S. and Russia are conducting advanced tests of the next generation of nuclear weaponry, particularly the missile system known as MIRV (multiple individually targetable re-entry vehicles). Since each MIRVed rocket is capable of carrying a number of warheads, and each warhead is capable of being delivered to a separate target, the system vastly increases the destructive power of an individual missile. Some experts believe that the point of no return has already been reached in the eventual deployment of MIRVs. Even if the SALT negotiators were to agree quickly on a ban against their deployment, the problems of policing such an agreement would be enormous. Once multiple warheads are installed on missiles, there is no currently known way of detecting them short of on-site inspection, a procedure that the Russians have consistently vetoed.

The delegations will be led by the same men who chaired the lead-up talks in Helsinki. They are Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Semyonov, 58, the No. 3 man in the Kremlin Foreign Office, and Gerard C. Smith, 55, a Republican attorney who served as the State Department's special assistant for atomic affairs in the Eisenhower era. The two men reportedly developed a cordial, businesslike relationship during the five-week preliminary negotiations in Helsinki. After the opening session, their delegations will meet alternately in the U.S. and Soviet embassies in Vienna.

Complete Review. In the four months since the Helsinki talks ended, the Nixon Administration has undertaken a complete review of its negotiating strategy at SALT. The President has not lacked advice. Last week, for example, by an overwhelming vote of 72 to 6, the Senate passed a resolution calling on the Administration to propose "an immediate mutual moratorium" of indeterminate duration on the further deployment of all strategic nuclear weapons. The moratorium would include anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs) and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) as well as MIRVs. Former Presidential Adviser McGeorge Bundy urged the President to go even farther by ordering a unilateral stand-down in MIRV and ABM deployments for a limited period of time. Perhaps most significant of all, a 14-member committee of senior statesmen and scientists, appointed by the President, reportedly recommended that the U.S. take the initiative at the talks, possibly by proposing a temporary moratorium.