The World : Mobile Missile Deal Seen

The United States has signaled to the Soviet Union that it is ready to negotiate on land-based mobile missiles in the Geneva arms control talks, according to a senior Soviet official. Col. Gen. Nikolai F. Chervov, the Defense Ministry’s leading spokesman on arms control, said in an interview with the Washington Post that the United States appears to be moving away from its demand for a ban on such missiles, because the Pentagon believes it has developed a workable plan to put MX intercontinental missiles on rail cars. An American official in Moscow said there had been no change in U.S. policy. But he confirmed that the United States has, for the first time, told the Soviet Union that it is willing to negotiate on ways to verify an agreement that would allow both sides to deploy mobile missiles.