Uproar over Arms Control

But, the President insists, the Administration is not in disarray

The timing was, at best, unfortunate. For weeks the Soviet Union had waged a clever campaign to convince America's nervous NATO allies that the U.S. was stubbornly opposed to any real progress in the Geneva talks on limiting intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe. By contrast, Soviet Leader Yuri Andropov grandly revealed that he was willing to make generous-sounding "concessions." There were bitter divisions in the Reagan Administration over how to respond. The confusion was compounded last week when the President fired his arms control chief, Eugene Rostow, 69, and replaced him with Kenneth Adelman, 36, an arms control neophyte with pronounced conservative views.

The shift at the top of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) sent the wrong signal at the wrong time. Rostow, perhaps too publicly for his own good, had argued for a more flexible U.S. approach to the arms talks. His sacking was seen in European capitals as evidence that Reagan either was not serious about arms reduction or, almost as worrisome, had no idea how to respond to the Kremlin peace offensive. "The Administration has played right into Andropov's hands," said a French foreign affairs specialist. Indeed, the Soviets were quick to capitalize on their propaganda windfall. Rostow's dismissal, reported TASS, the official Soviet news agency, "can be viewed abroad as another evidence of utter confusion in the Reagan Administration's approach to the question of restricting the arms race."

By late last week Reagan was so alarmed at the impression that his Administration had lost its sense of direction on arms control that he called a sudden press conference specifically to deny that this was so. After terming arms control the "most important undertaking of our generation," he added: "Our allies should not be . . . concerned about whether we're lacking in determination or whether we are, indeed, in disarray. We're not."

The dustup over weapons policy came just as Reagan was trying to dispel a similar impression of disarray on important domestic issues. He spent much of the week grappling with ways to reduce the deficit-swollen federal budget and nudging a blue-ribbon commission toward a compromise on the politically explosive question of restoring the solvency of the Social Security system (see following stories). The air of uncertainty in the capital was heightened by the resignation of Richard Schweiker as Secretary of Health and Human Services, and by word that Tennessee Republican Senator Howard Baker, the Senate majority leader and Reagan's point man on the Hill, may not run again in 1984—except possibly for President, in the event Reagan decides not to seek reelection,