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Despite the Soviet Union's egregious act of brutality in the Asian skies, the current session of talks on Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) got under way a scant five days after the 269 people aboard the Korean Air Lines jet were killed by Soviet missiles. With good reason: if Soviet and American negotiators do not reach agreement by the end of the year, the U.S. and NATO plan to counter the Soviet SS-20 missiles targeted at Western Europe with an equally formidable array of Pershing II and cruise missiles. And so far, discouragingly little progress has been...
...article was clearly timed for maximum effect. One week after the resumption of the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) talks in Geneva and three weeks before the renewal of START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks), Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, dropped a bombshell of his own. In the fall issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, published last week, McNamara urged NATO to renounce its current reliance on the threat to use nuclear weapons, which he said are "totally useless" and "serve no military purpose...
...strongly advocating "linkage," the concept that talks on arms control and other important issues should be tied to Soviet conduct across the board. But the Administration insisted last week that the uproar over the Korean jet will not necessarily prevent continued negotiations in Geneva on Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) or Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START). West European leaders were particularly anxious that the INF talks not be broken off just as the highly controversial deployment of NATO missiles is about to begin. Reagan heeded their urgings. Said he: "We must and will continue to reach out for arms-reduction...
Unfortunately, an agreement in the INF talks before December, when NATO is scheduled to deploy American Pershing II and cruise missiles, seems very unlikely. Last week Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Georgi Kornienko and Deputy Chief of Staff Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev had a press conference in Moscow to put down reports emanating from West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher that the U.S.S.R. might become more flexible in its INF stance. "Such conclusions are wishful thinking," said Kornienko. Nor does there seem much hope of progress on limiting the number of intercontinental missiles at the START negotiations...
...never seriously considered suspending INF and START...