Gromyko Asks Italy to Oppose ‘Star Wars’

ROME —  Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko attempted Tuesday to drive a wedge between the United States and one of its closest NATO allies by asking Italy to oppose President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, known as “Star Wars.”

Gromyko said the U.S. Administration is made up of “people who, like sleepwalkers, proceed obliviously to the brink of the abyss,” and he asked Italians to “raise their voice against the takeoff of the arms race toward outer space.”

In luncheon remarks devoted almost entirely to the forthcoming resumption of U.S.-Soviet arms talks in Geneva, Gromyko also warned Italy and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations of their responsibility for permitting American cruise and Pershing 2 missiles to be deployed on their territories. This issue precipitated a Soviet walkout from arms talks in November, 1983.

But the Soviet foreign minister’s warnings, which came in the midst of a full day of talks with Italian leaders, apparently left his hosts unimpressed.

Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti, coming from almost three hours of talks with Gromyko, replied at the luncheon that Italy’s decision to base American cruise missiles in Sicily was “responsibly taken . . . in order to rebalance the vastly uneven nuclear forces of Europe” of which the Soviets have a heavy preponderance.

Although he skirted the “Star Wars” issue, on which Italy has so far taken an equivocal position, Andreotti expressed the hope for a U.S.-Soviet agreement at the resumed Geneva talks, which begin March 12, that would end the arms race in space as well as on Earth.

Gromyko will complete his visit to Rome today with what the Vatican spokesman describes as a “tete-a-tete” with Pope John Paul.