U.S. bid to ease S.A.L.T. fears

Press, 26 April 1979, Page 8

U.S. bid to ease S.A.L.T. fears

[NZPA-Reuter Washington; The Carter Administration I I has released data on Soviet! [missile tests to show that; Soviet compliance with a; [new nuclear arms pact can! (be verified despite the recent| loss of American listening; posts in Iran. The previously secret data demonstrates that without the stations the United States last Thursday tracked the flight of a giant SSIB rocket fired from Tyuratam in Soviet Central Asia to the Kamchatka Peninsula on the Bering Sea, informed sources have said. Both in this test and in a: more sophisticated test last [ December 26, the United | States obtained its informa-' tion from sources other than I the Iranian sites, the sources said. With negotiations on the; ;new Strategic Arms Limita-j [tion Treaty believed to be 'nearing an end, verification! lof Soviet compliance is shap-j ing up to be the biggest issue) in the Senate debate on ratification.

Senator John Glenn, the former astronaut and a respected moderate in Mr Carter’s Democratic Party, said this week that he was not convinced by Administration

assurances on verification. The Ohio Democrat has closely studied the verification question, and a number of senators who have not yet decided on their position are expected to follow his lead.

He told television interviewers he absolutely would not vote for S.A.L.T. 11 unless he was assured that Soviet weapons tests could be adequately monitored.. “The Senate is not going to buy an unverifiable treaty,” he said.

The verification debate has intensified after the closing of United States posts in northern Iran by the new Islamic nationalist Government earlv this vear.

The Central Intelligence Agency director (Admiral Stansfield Turner), according to published reports last week, said it would take five years to make up for the loss of Iranian monitoring posts.