Soviet Confirm Deployment of Missiles on Rail Cars, Deny Move Violates SALT

MOSCOW — A senior Foreign Ministry official confirmed Tuesday that the Soviet Union is deploying a new, mobile SS-24 missile but denied that it violates limits set in the terms of the 1979 strategic arms limitation treaty.

Viktor P. Karpov, head of the ministry’s arms control and disarmament department, said the SS-24s, which are being mounted on railroad cars, are replacing stationary, silo-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles. The mobility of the new missiles would contribute to overall nuclear stability, he said at a news briefing.

Karpov depicted the change as a modernization of the Soviet long-range nuclear arsenal. “The Soviet Union is replacing obsolete stationary silo launchers with mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles,” Karpov said.

Less Vulnerable

Because the SS-24s would be less vulnerable to attack than a silo-launched missile, he added, it would reduce the possibility of a successful first strike on Soviet territory.

“Higher mobility is a greater guarantee of survivability,” he said in response to a question. Karpov said some U.S. officials have made the same argument in the past.

Pentagon analysts predicted earlier this year that the new missile would be deployed in 1987, and U.S. officials reported last week that some had already been positioned on rail cars. They said the SS-24 can deliver 10 nuclear warheads to targets 6,250 miles away.

Since the new missile will be mounted on railroad cars and moved around the Soviet Union, it could create difficulties of verification if Washington and Moscow ever agree on a strategic arms reduction pact, the U.S. analysts have said. For years, U.S. officials have considered deployment of a similar new U.S. missile, the MX, on railroad cars to counter the Soviet move. The MX is also capable of carrying 10 independently targeted warheads.

Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) has charged that the latest Soviet move violates a key provision of the 1979 treaty, known as SALT II, but Karpov denied that. The SS-24 represents the single new missile allowed to both the Soviet Union and the United States under that agreement, he said, and the total number of Soviet ICBM warheads is below the SALT II limit. He said his country also will not exceed the SALT II limit of 820 land-based ICBMs with multiple warheads.

American officials have charged that the SS-25, another long-range Soviet missile, is the sole missile that may be deployed under the terms of the SALT II agreement. Soviet authorities, however, insisted that the SS-25 is merely a modified version of the older SS-13 missile.

Karpov noted that the United .States renounced the agreement, which the Senate never ratified as a treaty, in May, 1986, and exceeded the limit last November by modifying the 131st B-52 bomber to launch cruise missiles. The White House said this action was in response to previous Soviet violations of the agreement.

Commenting on Soviet-American arms talks, the former chief negotiator for the Soviet side reiterated the Soviet theme that U.S. nuclear warheads for 72 West German Pershing 1-A missiles has become the biggest obstacle to an accord on elimination of intermediate range missiles.

Karpov said that failure to eliminate the 72 warheads would create a loophole in any agreement, and he accused the United States of playing a “double game” by trying to retain the warheads and still contend that it favors a “global double-zero” option--the elimination of both classes of intermediate-range missiles, those with a range of 600 to 3,000 miles and shorter-range weapons of 300 to 600 miles.

If the United States wants to retain the 72 warheads, he said, Washington should renounce the double-zero option and start new talks that would exclude the Soviet Union’s own shorter-range missiles.

The Reagan Administration says the 72 missiles do not fall within the scope of the Geneva talks between the two superpowers because they involve a third party and because the arrangement with the West Germans predates the arms control talks.

Meanwhile, in Bonn, according to the news agency Reuters, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher said that no country would benefit more than West Germany from a superpower ban on nuclear missiles and that Bonn would back every effort by the United States to achieve it.

He made the pledge in a five-page statement on disarmament and detente without, however, mentioning the Pershings.

Genscher’s statement was issued by his Free Democratic Party, which says Bonn should be prepared to abandon the 72 missiles and their American-controlled warheads. His conservative partners in the Bonn coalition oppose such a step.

Genscher said the heaviest concentration of weapons and forces in the world was on German soil, therefore West German interests would be served by the proposed intermediate-range missile ban.

“We want an American-Soviet agreement on the double-zero solution and we will do everything to see it achieved,” he said.

The statement was seen as a rebuff to conservatives who argue that the double-zero accord would give the Soviet Union a strategic advantage and damage West Germany’s security.