Reagan Saw No Use in Going to Funeral

President Reagan said today that he ruled out going to the funeral of Soviet President Konstantin U. Chernenko because “there’s an awful lot on my plate right now (and) I didn’t see that anything could be achieved.”

Speaking to a group of regional editors and broadcasters, Reagan said he sent his condolences and will dispatch Vice President George Bush to represent him at the funeral in Moscow on Wednesday.

Reagan said he started thinking about going to Moscow “as of 4 o’clock this morning after the phone call came” waking him to inform him of indications that Chernenko was dead.

‘I Leaned the Other Way’

“First of all, there’s an awful lot on my plate right now that would have to be set aside,” Reagan said. “I didn’t see that anything could be achieved by so going, and we discussed it in the office this morning, but, no, I leaned the other way.

“We had heads of state coming here. The end of the week I’ll be leaving for Canada for a meeting that’s been set up for a long time there, things of that kind. I didn’t see where I could do it, and the vice president is already in Europe, so that it would seem very logical for him to do it.”

Presidential spokesman Larry Speakes said Reagan’s decision not to travel to Moscow came during a 30-minute meeting this morning with his foreign policy advisers. The decision was announced minutes before the Kremlin named Mikhail S. Gorbachev to succeed Chernenko as Communist Party leader.