NATION AND WORLD
Summit chances cool as dispute warms up
Page 11
By United Press International
WASHINGTON — The Reagan administration yesterday warned that hopes for a superpower summit were wavering because of a claim by the Soviet Union that it never promised to retrain from using force against American soldiers in East Germany.
University Daily Kansan, April 24, 1985
The festering controversy, stemming from the shooting of Army Maj. Arthur Nicholson by a Soviet sentry in East Germany a month ago, appeared to chill hopes for a meeting between President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader.
1 The Soviets on Monday rejected a statement by the State Department that the Soviets had promised April it not to use force in the future against U.S. military liaison personnel and would consider providing compensation to Nicholson's family. 2 A Soviet Embassy statement said the U.S. version of the agreement, reached at a meeting of military officers in Potsdam, East Germany, did not correspond with the facts and that Moscow reserved the right to deal as necessary with "unidentified intruders" — as it described Nicholson.
DEPUTY WHITE HOUSE press secretary Larry Speakes, reading a lengthy statement to reporters, said the reported the facts and was unacceptable.
"The description of Major Nicholson's killing released by the Department of State is accurate," Speakes said.
"Continued Soviet refusal to address this matter in a responsible and reciprocal fashion cannot fail to have the effect on future relations," he warned.
Nicholson was shot — under circumstances that are still in dispute — March 24 while conducting an inspection tour under a post-World War II agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States, which he described as each side to observe military activity in the other's half of Germany.
DEFENSE SECRETARY CASPAR
Weinberger was blunt when asked
yesterday about the Soviet about-
face.
Responding to questions, Speakers said the United States had not been informed officially that Gorbachev intends to attend the opening of the fall session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September.
"They're just lying, that's all," he told CBS.
There has been speculation that the session or the U.N. 40th anniversary celebration in October would be the one for a Reagan-Gorbachev summit
But Speakes, indicating a cooling relationship, said, "The president has not yet determined whether he would be going to the United Nations." Reagan has attended the opening sessions in the past.
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