An East-West Cold Front

Hopes fade for a spring thaw between Moscow and Washington

It was the kind of statesmanlike undertaking that Presidents relish unveiling in the course of a televised news conference. "I have an important announcement," said Ronald Reagan last week in the East Room of the White House. "In two weeks I will send Vice President Bush to Geneva to present to the 40-nation conference on disarmament a bold American initiative for a comprehensive worldwide ban on chemical weapons." Just in case anyone had missed the larger message, the President added: "This latest initiative reflects my continuing strong commitment to arms control."

The Administration's proposal to outlaw the production and stockpiling of deadly nerve gas and other chemical weapons is just one move in a diplomatic East-West chess game that is still in its early stages. Later this month, Washington is also scheduled to endorse a new NATO proposal at the eleven-year-old negotiations in Vienna aimed at reducing NATO and Warsaw Pact troop levels in Europe. Discussions between the U.S. and the Soviets on such matters as the opening of a new consulate in each nation and resuming cultural exchanges will probably take place within a few weeks. There is even a hint of movement on the nuclear front: an Administration study group is in the process of examining potential new compromises in the stalled strategic arms talks. Says a senior U.S. diplomat in Washington: "The time seems right to move matters Soviet off dead center."

Yet in almost every case, the White House has been able to patch together agreements between the State Department and the Pentagon only with the greatest difficulty. This bureaucratic battling has produced little that seems likely to interest the Kremlin, which wants to do nothing that might politically help the man whom one Soviet commentator called "the worst U.S. President since Truman." The prospects for significant progress in the superpowers' relations for the remainder of this year have rarely appeared dimmer. Said one top Reagan aide of the chances for a thaw: "I think under any scenario we're talking about next year."

Even last week's initiative on chemical warfare was framed in terms guaranteed to invite Soviet objections. Because Moscow's "extensive arsenal of chemical weapons threatens U.S. forces," said Reagan, America must maintain "a limited retaliatory capability of its own, until we achieve an effective ban." In fact, while negotiations proceed, Reagan plans to go ahead and modernize the U.S. chemical arsenal, which has been in mothballs since 1969. In addition, the U.S will insist on the right to inspect for Soviet chemical weapons not only on "declared sites," where they are known to be manufactured, but anywhere it suspects they might be made. The Soviet news agency TASS immediately branded the offering "nothing short of a propaganda trick" and accused Reagan of trying to block an agreement "by making patently unacceptable conditions for 'verification' and 'enforcement.' "