SALT: The Home Stretch

Vance and Gromyko "work on the last details of an arms pact

The question was one that reporters asked at just about every meeting between Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko: How far apart were the two diplomats in their seemingly endless effort to work out a second-stage SALT treaty? In Geneva last week Gromyko answered by holding his hands about a foot apart.

"Large?" asked a reporter trying to gauge the distance.

"Medium," said Gromyko.

Actually the gap was quite small, but still too wide to be bridged last week. Despite three days of hard bargaining over arms limits, Vance and Gromyko were unable to resolve all of the relatively few issues still blocking SALT II.

At week's end, it was uncertain whether the remaining differences would delay the first summit between Jimmy Carter and Soviet Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev. It was tentatively being planned for Washington in mid-January, just a fortnight before the visit of China's Teng Hsiao-p'ing. The President, in fact, has wanted to see Brezhnev for a year, but the Russians have refused to come until SALT II was ready for signing.

As Vance headed for Geneva last week, there were signs that after six years of talks, SALT II was finally within reach. The Secretary seemed especially relaxed on the plane. During the first day's talks, after reading their formal statements, Vance and Gromyko engaged in some serious trading, indicating that both had been given substantial leeway to strike a bargain. Later, after telephoning a brief progress report to Carter, a tired Vance acknowledged that the number of outstanding questions had been narrowed. Still, he cautioned, "We have some issues yet to be resolved. Some are difficult."

Most of SALT'S major points, of course, had already been negotiated and were contained in a 62-page draft. The main part of the draft is a treaty running to 1985, limiting both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to 2,250 strategic weapons systems: a mix of long-range bombers, land-based inter-continental ballistic missiles and the submarine-launched ballistic missiles. This would be a much more modest achievement than the sharp reductions that the Carter Administration had sought in March 1977. In fact, because the U.S. now deploys about 2,150 strategic systems, the Pentagon actually would be able to add weapons under SALT II. While the Kremlin would have to trim its strategic arsenal by about 300 to get under the ban, it would be able to do some of this by dismantling aging bombers and rockets.

Of the problems facing Vance and Gromyko last week perhaps the most difficult was one touching on a crucial aspect of arms control: SALT I's guarantee that neither side would interfere with the other's attempts to check, by electronic means or spy satellites, on whether there has been cheating. In Pacific Ocean tests last July, Moscow used a complex code to hide the data beamed from its warheads to Soviet listening stations. The purpose might have been to prevent the U.S. from fully monitoring the tests. Vance undoubtedly argued last week that SALT implicitly prohibits such coding and insisted that it be banned by the new treaty.

One of the other main disputes involved the number of cruise missiles that could be put aboard a plane for aerial launching. The Soviets were seeking to restrict the number to 20 per plane, the most that can be loaded onto a B-52 bomber. But because the U.S. is considering outfitting jumbo jets to carry as many as 80 cruise missiles, Vance pressed the Soviets for a compromise that would set an average limit of about 30 per plane.

After the morning session on their final day of talks in Geneva, Vance and Gromyko emerged looking grim and discouraged. Then they resumed negotiations for another four hours later in the day. When they came out, their mood had dramatically changed for the better. Relaxed and smiling, they said they had made enough progress not to have to meet again. They acknowledged that some substantive matters as well as certain details still had to be resolved, but these could be handled by the SALT negotiating teams.

Once the Administration finishes negotiating SALT II with Moscow, it must start bargaining with the U.S. Senate, where a two-thirds vote is required for treaty ratification. Experts estimate that odds today are no better than even that SALT II will pass. SALT'S critics argue that although the accord would grant both sides an equal number of strategic systems, the U.S. would be prevented from compensating for the overwhelming Soviet advantage in rocket size and power. But the chances of Senate approval will almost certainly improve as the White House begins lobbying for the treaty. To allay some critics' fears, the Administration will stress that it is increasing defense spending to counter the Kremlin's continuing military buildup. The new head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Lieut. General George Seignious II, points out that SALT II "is going to require additional money to modernize the strategic systems we have."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.