The World - News from July 16, 1986

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev said that an extension of the Soviet Union’s unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing depends “to a large extent” on U.S. decisions on disarmament, the news agency Tass reported. The Foreign Ministry did not clarify Gorbachev’s remarks before an international group of anti-nuclear scientists in Moscow. But they appeared to mark a change from the previous Kremlin stand that an extension depends on Washington joining the Soviet moratorium, which is due to end Aug. 6. The United States has refused to join, citing problems of monitoring compliance and plans to update American nuclear weapons.