Soviets Say U.S. Sought to Diminish ‘Peace Initiative’

The Soviet Union said today that the Reagan Administration dismissed its “major new peace initiative” in an effort to diminish the plan’s effect on world public opinion.

Visiting American congressmen welcomed Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s announced readiness for a summit with President Reagan, but official Soviet news media gave the summit short shrift and concentrated instead on trumpeting the Soviet leader’s latest proposal on arms control.

Gorbachev on Sunday announced a moratorium on deploying medium-range missiles in Europe until November and renewed the Kremlin’s call for a ban on testing space weapons during the U.S.-Soviet arms talks now under way in Geneva.

Soviet Advantage Cited

The United States, in dismissing Gorbachev’s gesture the same day, said the Soviets have a 10-to-1 advantage in medium-range missiles already installed. Washington has maintained all along that its space-defense research program, “Star Wars,” is not negotiable.

Gorbachev’s proposals appeared on the front pages of the Communist Party newspaper Pravda and the government daily Izvestia today. It was the main item on radio newscasts, which said it had attracted worldwide attention. The evening television news carried laudatory interviews with factory workers.

Tass, the official press agency, said Gorbachev’s proposals were stressed by Lev Tolkunov, head of one of two houses of the Soviet Parliament, at a meeting with the visiting Americans.

More Policy Talk

The U.S. delegation--led by House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. and the Republican minority leader, Robert H. Michel--is expected to get a fuller exposition of Soviet arms policy Tuesday from Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko and at an anticipated meeting with Gorbachev on Wednesday.

Delegation members expressed pleasure at what they called Gorbachev’s “positive attitude” toward Reagan’s invitation to a summit.

“I think it augurs well for world peace when the two dominant nations of the world can get at the table and sit down,” O’Neill said.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, traveling in Singapore, today dismissed any Soviet moratorium on deployment as unacceptable, saying it would freeze Moscow’s enormous superiority in place.

Thatcher told a press conference that the move by Gorbachev “does not alter the position in any way. The consequences of such a freeze would not be balance, which is what we seek, but enormous Soviet superiority. That of course would be unacceptable.”

Other Western European leaders did not react immediately.

Gorbachev’s proposals, Page 4.