Discussion of Issues Separately Appears Unresolved : Geneva Negotiators Split on Timetable

U.S. and Soviet negotiators held their third session of the arms control talks Tuesday but apparently were unable to agree on a timetable for tackling the separate issues of strategic, intermediate and space weapons.

The two sides met for two hours and 40 minutes at the Soviet Union’s Geneva mission to the United Nations after a four-day recess, during which Moscow’s chief negotiator accused Washington of dealing in bad faith with the space weapons issue and Belgium prepared to deploy 16 U.S. cruise missiles.

The three senior negotiators for both nations attended the meeting: Max M. Kampelman, former Sen. John Tower and Maynard W. Glitman for the United States and Viktor P. Karpov, Yuli A. Kvitsinsky and Alexei A. Obukhov for the Soviet Union.

In a brief announcement after the session, the U.S. delegation said only that the two sides will meet again Thursday at the offices of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. It did not say what was discussed Tuesday.

Officials said the next meeting will be a plenary session and include the three senior negotiators from each side, implying a continuing lack of agreement about when the talks should split into working groups to discuss the separate issues of space, strategic and intermediate-range weapons.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko, in setting up the talks Jan. 8, agreed they should divide into three separate negotiations, but it has not yet been decided when that will happen.

Space the First Frontier

The Soviet Union has said there can be no agreements on reductions in strategic and intermediate-range nuclear weapons until there is an agreement on President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative--a plan to do research on space-based defenses against nuclear missiles.

Since the two sides met last Thursday, Karpov, the chief Soviet negotiator, has appeared on Soviet television to accuse the United States of acting in bad faith on the space issue.

Karpov said Saturday that U.S. officials are merely giving “lectures” about the supposed advantages of space weapons rather than negotiating seriously for their elimination.

Shultz said Karpov’s televised accusation breached the agreed confidentiality of the Geneva meeting and risked turning it into a propaganda show.

Meanwhile, also since the last meeting, Belgium agreed to deploy the first 16 of 48 cruise missiles as part of a NATO plan to counter more than 400 Soviet intermediate-range missiles targeted on Western Europe. Moscow said the action was an obstacle to the talks.

In Moscow for the funeral of President Konstantin U. Chernenko last week, Belgian Foreign Minister Leo Tindemans offered to put off the deployment if the Soviets would end their insistence on negotiating space weapons and nuclear arms as a package.

Such an agreement would have paved the way for a separate agreement on the intermediate-range nuclear weapons of most concern to Europe. The Soviets, however, rejected the offer.