Soviets Offer New Arms Proposal to U.S.

MOSCOW--The Kremlin's chief arms negotiator said yesterday a Soviet proposal for a global ban on medium-and shorter-range nuclear missiles could bring an arms accord within 60 days and a superpower summit this year.

The Soviets reiterated, however, that any agreement on the missiles would require the destruction of U.S. warheads earmarked for use on West German shorter-range Pershing 1A missiles.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, in comments reported Wednesday, advocated publicly for the first time the "global double zero" arms control option, offering to scrap Soviet intermediate-range missiles in Asia if the United States agrees not to deploy 100 medium-range warheads in Alaska.

The intermediate category comprises shorter-range missiles (those with a range from 300 to 600 miles) and so-called medium-range missiles (those with a range of 600 to 1500 miles).

In Washington, the White House reacted positively to the new Soviet stance, saying it improved chances for the signing of a major arms control treaty and a superpower summit in coming months.

Yuli M. Vorontsov, the first deputy foreign minister who heads the Soviet team at the superpower arms talks in Geneva, said yesterday the Kremlin's offer should give a "new impulse" to the negotiations, which have been bogged down for months.

"The coming two months would be sufficient" to reach an agreement, Vorontsov told a news conference.

"After this treaty is agreed to and initialed," he said, "then there will be a possibility to sign it at a summit level."

President Reagan and Gorbachev agreed during their first meeting in Geneva in 1985 that Gorbachev would visit the United States in 1987, but the Soviet leader has indicated he will not go to Washington unless the superpowers have made concrete progress in arms control.

Superpower negotiators were meeting in Geneva yesterday to study the latest Soviet proposal.

Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, the chief of the Soviet general staff, told the news conference that any agreement on the missiles would require the destruction of the U.S. warheads earmarked for the West German missiles.

West Germany has maintained that the 72 missiles cannot be included in a superpower arms deal since they do not belong to the United States, and the Reagan administration has supported that stance.

"We're talking about the nuclear warheads that are the property of the U.S.A.," Akhromeyev said. "The Federal Republic of Germany is a nonnuclear state and does not have its own nuclear weapons."

The official news agency Tass said Gorbachev advocated the "double zero" concept in written replies to questions by the Indonesian newspaper Merdeka. The agency distributed the text of the queries and Gorbachev's answers.

Washington and Moscow last year agreed to eliminate medium-range missiles from Europe, with each side retaining 100 warheads on its own territory--the Soviet weapons in Asia east of the Ural Mountains.