U.S. May Bomb Terror Centers, McFarlane Says

WASHINGTON —  Robert C. McFarlane, President Reagan’s national security adviser, said Sunday that the United States must be ready to bomb the “nerve centers” of terrorism if it is to maintain a credible policy against terrorists.

McFarlane declined to specify targets when a television interviewer asked whether the United States would bomb training centers in Iran, believed to be the source of much anti-American terrorism.

‘There Are Costs’

“An effective policy against terrorism must include occasional use of force to make clear that there are costs to attacking Americans,” he replied. “And that must go not to the tentacles but to the nerve centers of where terrorism is spawned and sustained--training, that sort of thing. But we are not going to telegraph the punch.”

At another point during the Washington interview show, “John McLaughlin’s One on One,” McFarlane described Libya, which last week signed a defense pact with Sudan, as an ever-present threat.

“Anywhere Libya is involved,” he said, “it is prudent to be careful about the safety of Americans. Libya hasn’t made a secret of its wish to do harm, violence, to us. So yes, in Sudan, but elsewhere as well, Libya is a menace.”

Praise for Lebanese

McFarlane praised the efforts by Lebanon to identify and prosecute those who hijacked TWA Flight 847 last month. But he did not rule out possible U.S. action along the lines followed by Israel when it kidnaped Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann from Argentina, then tried and hanged him in 1962.

Asked if the United States might follow the Eichmann precedent in prosecuting the hijackers, McFarlane said, “I don’t think we can foreclose the responsibility of this government to take such means as are at its disposal to bring to justice those who may, in the future, be responsible for violence against Americans.”

McFarlane conceded some disappointment that U.S. allies have failed to respond to Reagan’s call for a boycott of Beirut’s international airport because of its lax security, a call that drew protests from Lebanon and other Arab nations. But he indicated that continuing U.S. persuasion may be productive.

“The response we’ve gotten from friends and allies has been better privately than it has been in terms of public endorsement,” he said. “But those private efforts that are taking place now, behind the scenes, are having some effect--and I think not least in urging the governments of Lebanon and Syria to improve the situation at Beirut International Airport.”

On other issues, the presidential adviser said:

--In preparation for Reagan’s November meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Soviet officials must “digest” the failure of their expectations that U.S. power would decline, and both sides must recognize that the enormous growth of Soviet military power “will lead us into an ever-less-stable imbalance, and that says something about their interest in introducing greater stability.”

--There are prospects that a nuclear cooperation agreement can be concluded with China that “would involve civil reactors, not weapons.”

--The $5 million in U.S. military aid for Cambodian insurgents voted by the House should be spent through the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations “without creating some false expectations of major U.S. military involvement on the ground in Indochina.”