Pact on Accidental Clashes OKd

MOSCOW —  The Soviet Union and the United States, in a move marking warming ties between their military establishments, signed a pact Monday aimed at preventing accidental conflict between the superpowers.

The pact was signed by the Soviet armed forces chief of staff, Gen. Mikhail A. Moiseyev, and Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a ceremony in the Soviet Defense Ministry.

Soviet and U.S. officials said that the pact, which takes effect Jan. 1, refers only to unintentional acts by their armed forces that could spark the use of force and is not aimed at avoiding incidents like the shooting down by a Soviet jet of a South Korean airliner in 1983 that had strayed into Soviet airspace.

U.S. officials said the four areas covered by the pact are:

-- The unintentional or emergency entry by aircraft or ground forces of one side into the national territory of the other.

-- Hazardous use of lasers, which are capable of blinding opposition troops or damaging equipment, during testing or military exercises.

-- The disruption of military operations by the other side in a mutually-agreed “special caution area”--a region of high tension like the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war--where the forces of both sides were at close quarters.

-- Interference with the command and control networks of either side.