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C00002 00002	n076  1457  29 Jan 80
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n076  1457  29 Jan 80
 
BC-BREZHNEV
By R.W. APPLE Jr.
c. 1980 N.Y. Times News Service
    LONDON - A British newspaper reported Tuesday that President Leonid
I. Brezhnev of the Soviet Union issued a grim though indirect warning
to the United States last week against arming China with nuclear
weapons.
    The Daily Mail, a mass-circulation national daily, said in a
dispatch from its correspondent in Paris, Alan Tillier, that the
warning had been delivered by the Soviet leader at a meeting in
Moscow with Jacques Chaban-Delmas, a former French premier who now
heads the national assembly.
    According to the newspaper's account, which cited no sources,
Brezhnev pounded his desk again and again and declared:
    ''Believe me, after the destruction of Chinese nuclear sites by our
missiles, there won't be much time for the Americans to choose
between the defense of their Chinese allies and peaceful co-existence
with us.''
    During the interview, the Mail reported, Brezhnev repeatedly said he
''would not tolerate'' certain actions by the West. One of them was
nuclear armament of China. It would lead, he was said to have warned,
to a Soviet nuclear attack on China, which would give the United
States ''only minutes to decide their options.''
    Chaban-Delmas spent an hour and 40 minutes with the Soviet leader.
He returned to Paris sooner than expected, cutting his planned visit
of a week in half to protest the banishment of Andrei Sakharov, the
dissident Soviet physicist, from Moscow.
    Since his return, the French politician has said nothing in public
about his meeting with Brezhnev, although a number of rumors have
been circulating in French political circles for the past few days.
His office refused to comment on the Mail story.
    The Carter administration has made it clear in a number of ways that
it intends to tighten American links to Peking as a result of the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Among other things, Washington has
proposed a new military aid package, but there has been no public
discussion of providing China with nuclear technology.
    According to the Mail, Brezhnev also attacked the American plan to
provide more powerful nuclear weapons for Western Europe, which has
been approved by most of the members of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization.
    ''There are now 30 minutes between the American missiles and our
own,'' the paper quoted him as saying. ''We cannot accept that this
delay be reduced to 6 minutes by new American missiles in Germany.''
    
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n509  2301  01 Feb 80
 
BC-GROMYKO-02-02
    EDITORS: The following is from the London Telegraph and is for use
only in the United States and Canada.
    By John Miller
    Daily Telegraph, London (Field News Service)
     LONDON--The Soviet Union appears to be putting strong pressure on
Romania to ''toe the line'' on the East European Communist bloc's
stand on Afghanistan.
     Reports from Bucharest Friday said Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko
had another round of talks with President Nicolae Ceausescu, the
maverick Romanian leader, on the East-West situation following the
Soviet military intervention.
     Gromyko, now widely believed to be adopting a hardline position in
the ruling Soviet Politburo, flew suddenly to the Romanian capital on
Thursday.
     Official reports said the visit was at Ceausescu's request but it
was virtually certain that Gromyko invited himself to Bucharest to
read the riot act.
     Romania is the only Warsaw Pact country not to have expressed its
support for the Kremlin, and annoyed the Soviets at the United
Nations by not taking part in the vote that condemned the invasion.
     Last week Ceausescu went a stage further and delivered a speech
complaining that the world situation was ''more strained than at any
time since World War II''--similiar to a remark by President Carter.
Ceausescu said Romania would have to boost its defenses.
     At the same time, the Romanians pointedly played host to David
Newsom, a top U.S. State Department official, and assessed relations
as good.
     Gromyko's visit indicates the Soviet leadership feels it is time to
tell Ceausescu that he should moderate his criticisms of Soviet
policy.
     It is not believed in Western capitals that the Soviet Union will
bring military pressure on Romania in the immediate future, but it is
in a position to use economic levers, including the supply of oil.
    ENDIT MILLER
    
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n543  0400  02 Feb 80
 
BC-RUSS-02-02
    By Clare Hollingworth
    Daily Telegraph, London (Field News Service)
     LONDON--The Soviets have a nuclear ''overkill'' capability in
strategic weapons which could, at least in theory, knock out 300
population centers in the United States if all the launchers worked
and the warheads dropped on city targets.
     But this will not happen, as the Soviet Union is most unlikely to
use its accurate submarine- or land-based missiles to ''knock out''
whole towns while leaving dangerous missile sites untouched, which
could easily be used in retaliation against them.
     The first Soviet objective must be to ''kill'' or destroy the
American retaliation capability to knock out their weapons or cities.
Thus the first accurate strategic nuclear warheads are likely to be
aimed at intercontinental missile sites that have the capability to
reach the Soviet Union. The ''overkill'' might provide the Soviets
with confidence in their threats to ''take out,'' say, Chicago and
other cities one by one.
     But today even Soviet strategists want to achieve victory by using
nuclear warheads with caution. The idea of scores of cities being
destroyed in the manner of Hiroshima is outdated.
     The Soviets now suggest that the idea of bombing China ''back to
the stone age'' through saturation bombing, once a favorite topic, is
no longer considered, even though the Chinese have limited powers of
retaliation. There are fears that the sea, rivers, rain and winds may
distribute contamination too widely for comfort, and the large-scale
deliberate destruction of population centers is not reportedly one of
the current options.
     The Soviets, by the ruthless use of their warheads, which are more
numerous than those of the Americans, anticipate bringing the enemy
to heel by knocking out nuclear weapons, aircraft, communications
centers, ports and air defense systems with only a limited number of
cities involved.
     The United States and the Soviet Union each agreed to a ceiling of
2,250 strategic nuclear delivery vehicles to be reached by the end of
1981. This was the most positive item in the SALT II agreement signed
by President Carter and President Brezhnev in Vienna last June.
     This means that if the Soviets stick to the terms of the treaty
they must dismantle about 270 of their launchers while the United
States will be able, in theory, to increase theirs by around 190.
Should Moscow now decide to ignore SALT II, Soviet superiority in
strategic missiles is apparent.
     Before SALT II was signed the Soviet strategic delivery systems
were due to reach a total of 3,000 by 1981 and there is every reason
to believe that if the terms of the treaty are not kept--as the
Soviet productive capability has recently increased--the total could
be higher.
     For the SALT II ceiling of 2,250 applied to all delivery vehicles,
land-based and submarines launchers together with heavy bombers and
bombers carrying air-to-surface missiles.
     There are simple ways in which the Soviets could immediately
increase their strategic nuclear capability such as by in-flight
refuelling of the Backfire bomber if they ignore or repudiate SALT II.
     They agreed in SALT II not to use these aircraft ''strategically,
'' but only in the European (and Chinese) theaters.
     Further, although not part of the SALT II agreement, it is worth
noting that the Warsaw Pact powers have well organized, well tried
air defense systems which are not so apparent in the United States.
     Soviet defense expenditure is now around 12 per cent of their gross
national product and it has risen annually by some 3 percent in real
terms during the last decade. Around 21 percent of the Soviet defense
budget is devoted to research and development.
     Thus if the Soviets want to give the new mobile missile, the SS-20,
which is now confined to the European theater, additional range, it
would be unlikely to produce serious problems. The Soviets had an
overkill capability even with SALT II, but if this agreement is
disregarded this will be dangerously increased.
    ENDIT HOLLINGWORTH
    
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