The Prince George Citizen — Saturday, December 5, 1987 — 5 Saturday forum A chance to make history Reagan and Gorbachev to sign nuclear missile treaty by AILEEN McCABE Southam News WASHINGTON — The Russians are coming, giving President Ronald Reagan the biggest break he’s had in nearly a year. Dragged through the mire by the Iran-Contra scandal, publicly humiliated by his ham-handed attempts to reshape the Supreme Court and reduced to slanging matches with the Democratically-controlled Congress on everything from taxes to Contra aid, Reagan was condemned to watch his once-triumphant presidency reel out of control as the finale approached. Then along came Mikhail Gorbachev. Come Tuesday, Reagan will become the first U.S. president ever to eliminate a complete range of missiles. When he and Gorbachev sign the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, Reagan will finally enter his name in the history books. If the two leaders can also agree to step up work on reducing their arsenals of long-range missiles, Reagan will ensure the agenda for his final year is not only important, but far-reaching enough to carry him out of office in style. The possibility of achieving such an end-game success in a White House where the lights were presumed to be all but out will exact a political toll from Reagan. But it is a price he is obviously willing to pay. Already, the man who once referred to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire,” is being raked over the coals for his change of tune. Conservatives who for years viewed him as their ideological folk hero feel confused and betrayed. The situation is making for some strange bedfellows. When Vice-President George Bush spoke out in favor of the INF treaty during this week’s presidential candidates debate, he was forced to join ranks with his Democratic opponents who all support the treaty. The other five Republican presidential hopefyls — including Senator Robert Dole, the man who will have to stick-handle the agreement through the Senate — opposed it. In a recent New York Times article, Jimmy Carter’s assistant for national security affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski summed up the conservative concern with Reagan’s newly-minted arms control agenda. He wrote: “. . . the administration seems to have become preoccupied with nuclear arms control, abandoning its earlier advocacy of a policy that would compel the Soviet Union to stop its regional adventurism and become more respectful of human rights. This one-sided fixation has also led the administration to make claims on behalf of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement reminiscent of some of the more grandiose proclamations of the Kissinger detente era.” Not surprisingly, U.S. liberals are revelling in this confusion in the conservative ranks. Prominent arms control lobbyist Fred Wertheim- er, president of the Common Cause, maintains Reagan’s decision to sign the INF treaty will make arms control a politically mainstream issue. If Reagan is leading the fight for its ratification, he says, the opponents to arms control will be considered conservative extremists. That Senate battle — the treaty needs a two-thirds majority to be ratified — could be close, but it is likely winnable for Reagan, with Democratic help. Democratic Majority Whip Alan Cranston counts ; only 22 or 23 hardline opponents to ratification and 50 firm supporters. Twenty-seven or 28 senators remain undecided. But before Reagan even gets to that fight, a potentially more important contest looms on the horizon — the summit. After Gorbachev’s impressive performance on U.S. television this week, Reagan is going to have to double his efforts if he doesn’t want to be eclipsed on his home turf by the balding Russian. Surveys show Gorbachev is the most popular Soviet leader ever among Americans. In a poll conducted for the Americans Talk Security Project, 66 per cent of Americans gave Gorbachev a favorable rating. Seventy-one per cent said he “is different from previous leaders” and 57 per cent rejected the idea that he is “pursuing a public relations strategy and does not really intend to follow through” with his promise of arms reductions. And this is before the show even begins. Gorbachev, arguably as skilled a performer as Reagan, could easily up those numbers significantly during his four days in the media glare. Reagan professes not to be concerned about Gorbachev’s popularity. “I don’t resent his popularity or anything else,” the president told a group of students this week. “Good Lord, I co-starred with Errol Flynn once.” Still, it is a phenomena that is beginning to worry some here. Washington Post columnist David Broader wrote this week: “Over the years, Americans have learned that it is always wise to be wary of the Soviet smile, it can change in an instant into a teeth-baring threat. One hopes we will not be so naive as to make Gorbachev a new pop hero. But the worst mistake we could make would be to underestimate the man.” The White House is doing its best to prevent Reagan from being upstaged by Gorbachev. But, there are limits. Gorbachev has scheduled a press conference before his departure from Washington. It is the kind of uncontrolled event Reagan moves mountains to avoid. Despite repeated requests, the president will not match the Soviet leader and give one of his own. Instead, the 76-year-old Reagan has opted to wait for Gorbachev to fly away home, give his technicians time to get the'teleprompters in place, and address the nation from the controlled atmosphere of his Oval office. If nothing else, it will ensure he gets the last word in on the week’s historic events. Verification deal is the key I WARSAW PACT [] NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION by JONATHAN MANTHORPE Southam News OTTAWA — The joyous noise of elephants making love with which Washington will reverberate next week masks the fact that the offspring is a mouse. It is a clever, sophisticated and street-wise mouse to be sure, but a mouse nonetheless. The treaty to destroy intermediate-range nuclear missiles which Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan are to sign Wednesday — amid all the kitsch ballyhoo of which the U.S. is capable — makes the world only theoretically a safer place. Despite the large numbers of weapons to be scrapped — nearly 3,000 missiles in all — this only amounts to about three per cent of the superpowers’ total nuclear arsenals. The Shadow of The Bomb will not be removed from either western or eastern Europe, where most of these weapons are deployed. There are still nuclear artillery shells, short-range nuclear missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and good old-fashioned bombers. The importance of the intermediate-range nuclear force (INF) treaty is as a confidence-building exercise. It shows that a courtship between elephants, despite the trampled grass, uprooted trees and interminable gestation period, can produce progeny. Towards the end of the week, Reagan and Gorbachev are due to begin discussing the more important and much more difficult question of cuts in their stockpiles of intercontinental nuclear missiles. So what is in the 200 closely-typed pages that Gorbachev and Reagan will sign which might encourage them to seek further trysts? The premise is simple. The Soviet Union will dismantle and destroy 1,500 missile warheads deployed since 1977 and the U.S. will do the same with 364 missile warheads stationed since 1983. They will do the same for the same classes of missiles held in training or testing bases. This takes the totals to about 1,900 Soviet missiles and 850 for the U.S. U.S. officials are still unable to say exactly how many warheads this adds up to because not all training missiles have warheads and some missiles have multiple warheads. All the missiles have ranges between 500 and 5,000 kilometres. On the U.S. side are the Pershing II missiles with a 250-kiloton warhead and a range of 1,500 kilometres. These are mostly stationed in West Germany. Deployed in Britain, West Germany, Belgium and Italy are the cruise missiles with 300-kiloton warheads and a range of about 2,500 kilometres. On the Soviet side are a range of intermediate-range missiles stationed in eastern Europe and Soviet Asia. The most numerous are the SS-20s whose deployment in 1977 led to the U.S. response with Pershing and cruise. The SS-20s have a range of 5,000 kilometres and carry three 150-kilo-ton warheads. The guts of the agreement, and the critical aspect for any further agreements, is the verification process. Not all the details of these sections have been settled and Reagan and Gorbachev may have to settle the final details themselves. In essence, the verification process says that 60 days after the treaty is ratified each side will make an inspection of the other’s intermediate missile facilities. This involves about 30 facilities in the U.S. and western Europe and 128 facilities in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The missiles and their warheads will be destroyed during the next three years. During that time, each side will have the right to make 20 short-no-tice inspections a year at sites of their choice. At the end of the destruction period there will be a ‘further full inspection. In the following five years, each will be allowed 15 inspections a year, again with only a few hours’ notice. In the final five years of the treaty, 10 inspections a year will be allowed. These will be to ensure the deployment, training and back-up facilities are not again being used for these missiles! If either side feels the other is cheating or not complying with the treaty they will be able to appeal to a bilateral verification commission. But the ultimate sanction would be to nullify the treaty and go back to building this class of missile. Both sides will be watching with their spy satellites and other eavesdropping devices to ensure no new factories are built. An unusual feature of the treaty is that each side will allow the other to station 200 to 300 specially trained inspectors on its territory. They will also allow permanent observer posts outside their intermediate-range missile factories. These inspectors will be able to tell by the size of the rockets being taken out what type of missiles are being made. In the Soviet case, this means a group of U.S. inspectors get to sit outside the Soviet factory at Votkinsk, 1,000 kilometres east of Moscow for 13 years. Whether the Soviet inspectors get a better deal is arguable. Their 13 years will be spent outside the Pershing II production plant at Magna, Utah, 25 kilometres west of Salt Lake City. Armies - 2 .Ground force personnel Active duty VnsVRVVf mm I Air forces - 3 Combat aircraft Ground attack aircraft 995.000 796.000 Reserves 1,030,000 922,000 mmmil RWWVvWi mm Armored vehicles Main battle tanks 12,700 Mobile infantry combat vehicles Interceptor/fighters 444 Bombers <3 4 Helicopters Armed attack and anti-tank types 8,000 3,400 799 901 1,020 304 225 72 430 550 Artillery , Nayies _ 4 Incl. rocket launchers, heavy motion * I 11,700 Loaosi Tactical missiles Anti-tank guided weapons mmm Surface-to-air missibles iti 4,800 6.500 4.500 1,350 2,200 Submarines Excluding strategic missile subs 231 196 4 24 224 358 Warships Aircraft carriers 1. NATO guidelines area lEast and West Germany, Belgium. Netherlands. Luxembourg, Czechoslovakia, Poland) except for naval forces isee note 41. 2. Excludes paramilitary forces, bottler guards, security forces, reserves exclude troops out of active service more than five years, includes French forces based in Germany 3. Excludes naval air forces and bombers assigned to strategic nuclear forces 4 Forces in European/Atlantic waters. Ronnie and Gorby dolls are hottest items by MELANIE DICKSTEIN Southam News WASHINGTON — The Soviet invasion begins Tuesday and Commander Salamander is armed and ready. The Commander, as it’s called by its regulars, is one the many Washington businesses hoping to cash in on the upcoming summit. It’s stocked up on hammer and sickle suspenders, Persian lamb hats and Red Star pins. For those who don’t want to wear their summit souvenirs, shops are selling Ronnie and Gorby dolls created by the English comedy troupe Spitting Image. Since the summit announcement, the demand for these “perfect stocking stuffers” has far exceeded the supply. Other popular items are Ronnie and Gorby dog toys. The rubber squeeze toys, say manufacturers, are “strong but not indestructable.” But Reagan and Gorbachev aren’t the only attractions. Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa, has captured the American imagination and people are expressing their interest in a variety of ways. Some are paying tribute to Mrs. Gorbachev by plastering their cars with “Honk hello to Raisa” bumper stickers. Others are sporting Raisa T-shirts and drinking their morning coffee from Raisa mugs. If imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, then Mrs. Gorbachev will be thrilled by the number of Raisa look-alike contests to be held while she is in Washington — including one advertised in The Blade, the city’s most popular gay paper. The summit is expected to generate big bucks for more conventional businesses too. The local Bell telephone affiliate will be charging' a small fortune to install extra phones in the press centre which is being set up to accommodate the temporarily swelled media ranks. Each local phone line will be installed at a cost of $293 — at least twice the normal rate — plus a $600 security deposit. If long-distance service is needed, and it will be in most cases, the deposit will jump to $5,000. A telephone company spokesman explained the deposit is meant to discourage reporters from leaving town without paying for calls to their offices in places such as “Moscow, Tokyo or whatever other country somewhere on the other side of the world that they’re going to be coming in from.” And they will be coming in by the thousands, from around the corner and around the globe. The Foreign Press Centre is expecting between 3,000 and 5,000 foreign correspondents from countries including Bangladesh and Tanzania. An equal number of American journalists is expected to descend on the city. With just a few days left before Gorbachev’s plane touches down at Andrews Air Force Base there are still a number of pressing and unanswered protocol questions. Will Gorbachev bow to Reagan and don formal attire for the State dinner at the White House? Or will he shun black tie as Krushchev did before him? Will Nancy Reagan include the first family’s living quarters in the White House tour she is planning for Raisa Gorbachev or will she give her the prepackaged version tourists see everyday? Will the State Department and the White House dare commit the diplomatic faux pas of duplication by serving truffles at both a State Department luncheon and a White House dinner? When the summit winds up late next week, time — or possibly a press secretary — will have provided answers to all questions concerning politics and protocol. As far as Washington entrepreneurs are concerned, questions concerning profit have already been answered.