Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev ended a three day visit to Finland Friday, but Scandanavian officials said his latest arms reduction proposals would have little impact on the strategic balance in the region.
During the trip, billed in advance as a continuation of the Kremlin's Nordic peace offensive, Gorbachev reiterated a 2-year-old proposal to scrap the Soviet Union's four remaining aging Golf-class nuclear-armed submarines in the Baltic and declare the region a nulcear-free zone.As the Soviet leader left the northern town of Oulu after a short stopover, the Soviet army underscored Gorbachev's commitment to lower regional tensions by announcing unilateral cuts in conventional forces in the Baltic area.
The official Soviet news agency Tass said the Soviet military had announced that 40,000 troops and 1,200 tanks in areas adjacent to Finland were to be withdrawn by 1991 and that substantial cuts would also be made in artillery.
Prior to the announcement, Nordic countries reacted carefully to Gorbachev's keynote speech Thursday in which he attempted to breathe new impetus into his largely ignored 1987 initiative for the Nordic region.
Defense specialists throughout Scandinavia said Gorbachev's offer to remove the Golf-class submarines in the Baltic Sea was simply an attempt to take political and public relations advantage of a military modernization program designed to remove obsolete and costly-to-run vessels from the Soviet navy.
They termed the effect of the submarine scrapping on the regional military balance insignificant.
The submarines are among the oldest and least effective in the Soviet fleet and have been in service for three decades.
"He (Gorbachev) said nothing about withdrawing the nuclear missiles on the other ships in the Baltic Sea," said Swedish National Defense Research spokesman Bjorn Eklind.
"They are 30 years old, and the sound of them scares away birds miles away when they are up at the surface," Eklind side, adding their age and noise made them obsolete in modern warfare.
"I have, with great interest, read Gorbachev's speech and I'm looking forward to discussing the various proposals during my visit to Moscow in November," said Swedish Foreign Minister Sten Andersson.
Denmark's government welcomed Gorbachev's statement, saying, "There were some positive signals in the president's speech."
Reaction in Finland to the Soviet leader's speech was generally low-key and concentrated less on its military aspects and more on the unequivocal acceptance given by Gorbachev to Finnish neutrality.
"I wish to stress most firmly that the Soviet Union unreservedly recognizes Finland's neutral status and shall continue to do so in the future," the Soviet president said.