
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 9, 1990                   TAG: 9005090284
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

U.S. OFFERS TO STOP PRODUCING CHEMICAL WEAPONS

The United States has informed the Soviet Union that it is ready to stop production of chemical weapons at a mutually agreed date, a move intended to make possible the completion of a chemical weapons pact at the summit meeting three weeks from now between President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, administration officials said Tuesday.

Officials said the U.S. compromise, which was made known privately to Moscow several weeks ago, makes it likely that the two nations will be able to initial a bilateral accord at the summit calling for the destruction of all but about 5,000 tons of chemical weapons on each side. The United States is believed to have about 25,000 tons of such weapons and the Soviet Union close to 50,000 tons.

State Department spokesman Margaret Tutwiler said the chemical weapons negotiations will be discussed further in Moscow next week by Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze.

The new move marks the third stand in seven months by the Bush administration regarding the terms and timetable for halting U.S. production of chemical weapons.

At the United Nations last September, Bush proposed a drastic cutback of U.S. and Soviet chemical weapons stockpiles as a step toward a worldwide chemical arms ban. His plan at the time, though, envisaged continued U.S. production of chemical weapons even after a worldwide ban was signed - a position that came under heavy fire internationally and at home.

At the Malta summit in December, Bush agreed to stop U.S. production of chemical weapons at the time the worldwide ban enters into force. Gorbachev, however, refused to accept this position because a worldwide ban is many years away. The Soviets have made clear their reluctance to enter into a deal with Washington for sharply reducing chemical weapons stocks while the United States simultaneously might be producing additional - and more modern - gas warfare weapons.

The recent U.S. offer, officials said, is to halt production at a specified date to be negotiated with the Soviet Union. An official said the United States has been "forthcoming" about what dates would be acceptable, but he and others declined to specify the proposed U.S. timetable for a production cutoff.

The United States, while advocating a worldwide ban on chemical weapons and a separate deal to slash U.S. and Soviet stocks, began producing poison gas artillery shells again in 1987, ending a U.S. ban of nearly two decades in U.S. chemical arms production.

The United States would be ready to begin the dangerous and costly process of destroying chemical weapons in a matter of months in a new facility built for this purpose at Johnston Island in the Pacific, an official said. The new plant, now undergoing testing, is the first of eight or nine destruction plants that are projected, at a total cost of at least $3.8 billion, to render harmless the highly toxic weapons that U.S. military researchers have created.

The Soviet Union, though, has no destruction facility ready for use.

by CNB