Closing The Gap

By John Greenwald

The transatlantic telephone call came shortly after 9 a.m. last Tuesday, just as National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci was leaving Santa Barbara, Calif., to join Ronald Reagan for a trip to Los Angeles. The caller, Horst Teltschik, had news that would please the President. The West German National Security Adviser told Carlucci that Chancellor Helmut Kohl was about to announce plans to retire 72 aging Pershing IA missiles tipped with American nuclear warheads. At a stroke, one of the chief obstacles to a long-awaited Soviet-American agreement on intermediate-range nuclear forces seemed to dissolve, and a Washington summit between Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev again loomed likely for this fall. Despite a flurry of official denials, reports from Moscow claimed ; that the Soviet leader was freeing up the last week in October for such a trip.

Earlier in the week U.S. negotiators in Geneva had taken an equally important step to sweep away the other stubborn sticking point in the INF talks: they eased their demands for stiff on-site inspection checks to ensure compliance with a treaty. The turnaround was extraordinary for Reagan. It has long been an article of faith for conservatives, the President foremost among them, that any agreement should include the strictest possible verification procedures. Before entering the White House, Reagan attacked Jimmy Carter's unratified 1979 SALT II treaty for lacking adequate verification guarantees.

Yet Reagan was clearly delighted last week by the prospect of a deal. In a speech in Los Angeles, the President welcomed the Bonn proposal. "We can wrap up an agreement on intermediate-range nuclear missiles promptly," he said. "We ask ourselves, Are we entering a truly new phase in East-West relations? Is far-reaching, enduring change in the postwar standoff now possible? Surely, these are our hopes."

Reagan walked a fine line between showing enthusiasm for an arms deal and reassuring right-wing supporters who fret that he may be going soft in his quest to sign a treaty before the end of his term. The need to shore his right flank was particularly acute, because his retreat on verification came on the heels of his support for a Central American peace plan that conservatives fear could undermine the U.S.-backed contra rebels in Nicaragua. Though the President stopped short of repeating his earlier harsh depictions of the Soviet Union, he made clear that he still deeply distrusts Moscow. "While talking about reforms at home," he said, "the Soviet Union has stepped up its efforts to impose a failed system on others." He charged Moscow with "indiscriminate bombing and civilian massacre" in Afghanistan and challenged the Soviets to tear down the Berlin Wall and "show some glasnost in your military affairs" by publishing an accurate defense budget.

After attacking Reagan's speech for dumping a "heavy cold downpour" on East-West relations, Soviet Spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov praised the softened U.S. stance on inspections. "Taking into account that the U.S. has changed its position on verification," Gerasimov said, "we think that all these problems can be solved by our diplomats in Geneva." He also acknowledged that "the situation has changed for the better after this statement by Chancellor Kohl."

But Gerasimov indicated that the Soviets still wanted Washington's specific commitment that the Pershing IA warheads, which the U.S. controls, would be eliminated as part of a Soviet-American INF treaty rather than relying on Bonn's promise to dismantle the missiles later on. Washington contends that since the missiles belong to West Germany, they should not be part of a Soviet-American deal. Moscow argues that its concern lies not so much with the West German missiles as with the warheads. Though Kohl's announcement does not fully solve this dispute, it could allow the issue to be easily finessed.

The latest movement toward an INF agreement, which had been stalled since the superpower summit in Reykjavik last October, began building earlier this year. Gorbachev broke the deadlock by agreeing to the summit proposal that both sides remove all their intermediate-range missiles from Europe while each retained 100 outside that region. He then startled the U.S. by proposing to eliminate not only the missiles with a range of 600 to 3,500 miles but shorter-range weapons that can hit targets at distances of 300 to 600 miles as well. Finally, the Soviet leader announced this summer that he would accept Reagan's "global double-zero" plan and totally eliminate both classes of missiles worldwide.

But the West German Pershing IAs then became a major sticking point. Though they are 23 years old and so outmoded that U.S. troops in West Germany call them "tail fins" and "Chevies," the missiles were among the shorter-range weapons that Moscow now wanted to eliminate. The pressure on Kohl thus steadily grew. West German public opinion strongly favors an arms deal, and the Chancellor presumably would be sharply criticized at home if he resisted Soviet complaints and refused to budge on the issue. That would risk derailing the arms talks and angering both Washington and Moscow. Nor was he eager to strain East-West relations on the eve of East German Leader Erich Honecker's historic visit to West Germany.

Even so, Kohl's willingness to scrap the missiles caught his Cabinet by surprise. Summoning reporters to a news conference in Bonn, Kohl promised to dismantle the Pershings once the U.S. and the Soviet Union fulfilled the terms of a global arms agreement. His qualification was important. By linking destruction of the Pershings to an East-West accord, Kohl guaranteed that Bonn would not find itself in the position of disarming alone. At the same time, Kohl openly admitted that he had conferred with Washington before making up his mind. Said the Chancellor: "I want the incumbent American President to be able to sign an accord this year."

So, of course, does Reagan, who badly needs an agreement to salvage his final 17 months in office. Yet American demands for strict verification procedures, which included a system of "challenge" inspections of factories and missile sites on 24 hours' notice, ended up creating an awkward problem. Some hard-liners saw it as a way of forcing the Soviets to reject an agreement. Instead, an ironic reversal occurred. The proposal met resistance from the FBI, the CIA and some NATO allies. The reason: they feared the Soviets might agree. "Nobody thought seriously about what the impact on us would be if the Soviets exercised rights under an agreement to inspect American facilities," explains Jack Mendelsohn of the Arms Control Association, a private Washington group. A Pentagon official put it more bluntly: "The notion of Soviet inspectors tramping through a Martin-Marietta missile facility drove our people up the wall."

Indeed, it suddenly seemed that the U.S. might once again be put in the awkward position of having to take yes for an answer. Last month, for example, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze proposed extremely strict inspection arrangements for chemical-warfare installations, as well as missile sites and factories. That prompted U.S. negotiators to ease their demands. Washington now wants to limit "challenge" inspections to a few facilities, while pushing for steps that range from detailed data exchanges to periodic inspections of missile sites.

Some arms-control advocates were disappointed that by revising its position, the U.S. failed to seize the chance to set a precedent for strict verification that could serve for other treaties. Conservatives were particularly outraged. Declared James Hackett, an arms-control expert at the Heritage Foundation: "The Administration is proposing verification arrangements which do not guarantee that the Soviets won't cheat." Concurred Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, normally a staunch White House ally: "I think the Administration's proposals will prompt a hue and cry for stronger verification measures."

The Reagan Administration responded to these charges by insisting that the proposed new procedures are stringent enough and that the earlier demands for challenge inspections were no longer necessary now that the Soviets agree to scrap all their medium-range missiles worldwide. Under the global double-zero plan, the White House says, there would no longer be any factories or operating launch sites to inspect. Says Department Spokesman Phyllis Oakley: "The regime we seek will have the most stringent verification of any arms- control agreement in history."

If the final details of an INF agreement are resolved, it would mark the first time in history that a whole category of nuclear weapons is eliminated through a superpower treaty. Yet the value of the accord would be primarily symbolic; the INF issue is little more than a sideshow to the far tougher challenge of reducing the roughly 24,000 warheads that are part of the longer- range strategic arsenals of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. The Soviets have indicated that they would like the next summit to go beyond the INF question by establishing some framework for reducing long-range weapons and limiting Reagan's proposed Strategic Defense Initiative. But for now the Reagan Administration is hoping that Shevardnadze will bring word when he arrives in Washington later this month that Gorbachev has accepted Reagan's invitation to come to the U.S. for summit with an INF treaty as the centerpiece.

With reporting by Barrett Seaman/Los Angeles and Bruce van Voorst/Washington