Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 4, 1990 TAG: 9005040346
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Bush acknowledged that he does "worry about the military resurgence of some kind inside the Soviet Union." Soviet generals, wary about the rapid pace of warming superpower relations, recently have forced civilian leaders to back away from proposed arms-control deals.
And even though Bush denied a direct link between those concerns and his new arms control plan, the administration hopes that offering to negotiate away the thousands of U.S. nuclear artillery pieces and short-range missiles in the NATO arsenal will ease the Soviet military's concerns about a united Germany's membership in the alliance.
"We ought to look at ways our objectives can be accomplished that reduce the friction or enhance the acceptability on the part of the Soviet Union as much as possible," a senior administration official said in briefing reporters on Bush's plan.
The initial Soviet response to Bush's proposal was positive, with Tass, the Soviet news agency, declaring the new American proposal had been a Soviet idea in the first place.
Bush announced his new arms plan during a 45-minute press conference in which he also:
Called, again, for Congress to give him more flexibility in doling out foreign aid.
Expressed "disappointment" with the results of his policy toward China, but insisted he had "no apologies" for his attempts to avoid a break in relations between the two countries after the Chinese leadership smashed the nation's democracy movement. "Preserving a relationship with the People's Republic of China in the broad global context is important," he said.
Joked about the heckling that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev received during the May Day parade earlier this week. "He ought to come join some of the parades I go to around here," Bush said. "That's the fruits of democracy. He's just learning."
But, Bush acknowledged, Gorbachev is "under extraordinary pressure at home, particularly on the economy, and I do from time-to-time worry about a takeover that will set back the whole process."
In Brussels, where Secretary of State James Baker briefed NATO foreign ministers on the new arms control proposals, Baker and NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner said NATO allies were unanimous in their support.
But as Baker and other officials made clear, several fundamental parts of the proposal remain undecided, including whether the eventual goal of the new talks will be total elimination of ground-based nuclear weapons in Europe, as many Europeans have urged, or only a reduction in the superpower arsenals.
"We will have to work out the specifics of our negotiating position internally [within the administration] and with our allies," Baker said. Many decisions about the new plan will not be made until a NATO summit that Bush said will be held in late June or early July.
Bush's new arms plan is part of a basic re-evaluation of NATO defense strategy to adapt to what the president called "the transformed Europe of the 1990s."
The new proposal has two parts. First, effective immediately, the United States will stop modernizing nuclear artillery shells in Europe and cease work on modernizing the short-range Lance missiles now used by NATO. Next, the administration will ask the Soviets to begin negotiating a new treaty on removing the short-range weapons now in place.
NATO has 680 Lance warheads and more than 1,400 nuclear artillery shells, most of which are based in West Germany.
With the collapse of communist governments in Eastern Europe and the effective end of the Warsaw Pact as a military force, plans to modernize short-range weapons have been increasingly unpopular in Europe and on Capitol Hill.
The current weapons have ranges no greater than 75 miles and therefore would be guaranteed to explode within the territory of what are now friendly, democratic nations.
Bush "only performed the last rites" for a modernization plan that was "already dead," said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin, D-Wis.
by CNB