Strategic Weapons

Negotiators dealing with strategic nuclear weapons met for 2 1/2 hours Wednesday in the fourth week of U.S.-Soviet arms control talks. The two strategic weapons teams are led by former U.S. Sen. John Tower and Viktor P. Karpov. It was their second session since the talks divided into three subgroups last week. Under a confidentiality rule agreed to by both sides, the U.S. statement on the talks gave no further details on the session, held at the Soviet Mission.

It's the first Friday afternoon of the impeachment trial in the Senate and Cokie Roberts, cell phone in hand, momentarily stops in the Capitol corridors to place a call to Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). For nearly three months, most Democrats, and the entire Clinton administration, have been impossible to book on her Sunday morning news show, "This Week With Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts," due to a contract dispute that resulted in a network lockout of the technical unions.

The United States and the Soviet Union, declaring that they have reached "a new stage" of cooperation, announced Saturday that President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev will hold their first summit meeting during the first half of next year. The announcement, setting the first U.S.

President Bush has launched a last-ditch effort to complete the unfinished U.S.-Russian strategic arms reduction pact before the end of his Administration, and he telephoned Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin this week to press the issue personally, officials said Thursday. Yeltsin responded warmly that he also wants to sign a finished treaty before Bush leaves office, the officials said. "Yeltsin said, 'I'd like to sign it,' " a senior official said.

Premier Nikolai I. Ryzhkov met Saturday with U.S. industrialist Armand Hammer and urged progress on eliminating strategic weapons during next month's U.S.-Soviet summit, Tass reported. The news agency said Hammer and Ryzhkov met after Hammer, chairman of Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum, arrived in Moscow to open an exhibition of American art.

The Soviet Union on Friday formally presented its "Reykjavik package" of proposals for deep cuts in nuclear weapons, but U.S. negotiators now are resigned to the probability that the arms control talks are heading into a prolonged hiatus likely to last well into the new year. Soviet negotiator Viktor P. Karpov and American negotiator Max M. Kampelman flew here Friday morning from Vienna where they had participated in the inconclusive talks between Secretary of State George P.

Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger's article (Opinion, Sept. 8), "Talking Down Arms," posits the argument that President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative "is the only new idea that points away from excessive reliance on nuclear weapons." Unfortunately, Kissinger and the Reagan Administration ignore the "old" idea of a comprehensive nuclear test ban, a plan that could conceivably save us the projected $1 trillion for "Star Wars'." According to experts such as the former director of the CIA, William Colby, and the Federation of American Scientists, this proposal would work well within our national technical means for verification of significant violations.

Your recent editorial in support of the Midgetman missile ("Killing the Wrong Weapon," Dec. 20) offers curious arguments to defend an unnecessary weapon. First, it is vital to note that the primary rationale for Midgetman, the theoretical "window of vulnerability" (through which Soviet land-based missiles would attack our land-based missiles), was slammed shut by the Scowcroft Commission in its 1983 report. Then, as now, the United States maintained a triad of weapons--on land, sea, and air--that effectively compensates for the vulnerability of any particular leg. Land-based missiles might be more vulnerable than those launched from submarines, but the Soviets are surely not going to attempt a first strike against only 18% of our weapons when 46% of our warheads are at sea and largely invulnerable and another 36% are aboard bombers.

The Soviet arms reduction offer handed to President Reagan on Friday by Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze went somewhat further than Administration officials had expected, calling for a 50% cut in nuclear warheads and bombs, but it did not contain another feature that they consider crucial in any major arms control plan.

President Reagan turned "Star Wars" into a bread-and-butter issue at a campaign stop here Thursday, predicting that the missile defense system heralded a boom in jobs and prosperity that would rival the birth of the space program.

Soviet Defense Minister Yevgeny I. Shaposhnikov, moving to allay Western jitters triggered by the Ukraine's claims to the nuclear weapons based on its territory, declared Saturday that all strategic arms will remain tightly under the Kremlin's control. To avoid further political wrangling over the armed forces, Shaposhnikov called on the republics of the collapsing Soviet Union to sign a treaty creating a "defense union of sovereign states."

President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed a historic and long-awaited treaty cutting their nations' nuclear arsenals Wednesday, but they neared the end of their two-day summit meeting here still far apart on the future of arms control. With the new treaty, the two countries "reverse a half-century of steadily growing strategic arsenals," Bush said. "More than that, we take a significant step forward in dispelling a half-century of mistrust."

On the eve of the solemn signing of a treaty to slash the superpowers' nuclear arsenals, the Soviet Union pressed the United States on Tuesday to seek new arms control agreements in such major categories as strategic missiles, naval armaments and weapons in space. "The business is not finished," Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander A. Bessmertnykh told reporters. "We are somewhere in the middle. . . .

Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander A. Bessmertnykh made "meaningful and substantial" proposals on two of the three issues blocking a strategic arms reduction treaty Thursday, nudging the superpowers a bit closer to a July summit meeting, Secretary of State James A. Baker III said. With Bessmertnykh at his side, Baker said Moscow's new compromise offers will be studied by U.S. arms control experts overnight in preparation for a resumption of his meeting with the Soviet foreign minister today.

The United States and the Soviet Union, declaring that they have reached "a new stage" of cooperation, announced Saturday that President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev will hold their first summit meeting during the first half of next year. The announcement, setting the first U.S.

Your recent editorial in support of the Midgetman missile ("Killing the Wrong Weapon," Dec. 20) offers curious arguments to defend an unnecessary weapon. First, it is vital to note that the primary rationale for Midgetman, the theoretical "window of vulnerability" (through which Soviet land-based missiles would attack our land-based missiles), was slammed shut by the Scowcroft Commission in its 1983 report. Then, as now, the United States maintained a triad of weapons--on land, sea, and air--that effectively compensates for the vulnerability of any particular leg. Land-based missiles might be more vulnerable than those launched from submarines, but the Soviets are surely not going to attempt a first strike against only 18% of our weapons when 46% of our warheads are at sea and largely invulnerable and another 36% are aboard bombers.

Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander A. Bessmertnykh made "meaningful and substantial" proposals on two of the three issues blocking a strategic arms reduction treaty Thursday, nudging the superpowers a bit closer to a July summit meeting, Secretary of State James A. Baker III said. With Bessmertnykh at his side, Baker said Moscow's new compromise offers will be studied by U.S. arms control experts overnight in preparation for a resumption of his meeting with the Soviet foreign minister today.

President Reagan, taking a somewhat more cautious line than he did immediately after the summit, indicated Saturday that Soviet opposition to his Strategic Defense Initiative to develop a missile defense system could still prevent a new agreement to cut strategic offensive weapons by half. In his weekly radio address, which he delivered from Camp David, Md., the President said progress had been made toward getting agreement for such a reduction by the time he visits Moscow next spring.

President Reagan, taking a somewhat more cautious line than he did immediately after the summit, indicated Saturday that Soviet opposition to his Strategic Defense Initiative to develop a missile defense system could still prevent a new agreement to cut strategic offensive weapons by half. In his weekly radio address, which he delivered from Camp David, Md., the President said progress had been made toward getting agreement for such a reduction by the time he visits Moscow next spring.

Premier Nikolai I. Ryzhkov met Saturday with U.S. industrialist Armand Hammer and urged progress on eliminating strategic weapons during next month's U.S.-Soviet summit, Tass reported. The news agency said Hammer and Ryzhkov met after Hammer, chairman of Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum, arrived in Moscow to open an exhibition of American art.