Geneva Accord Broken by U.S., Gorbachev Says

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Tuesday accused the United States of breaking an accord on the agenda for the Geneva arms control talks, showing that Washington does not want an agreement.

“The completed first stage of the Geneva talks already gives ground to say that Washington does not seek agreement with the Soviet Union,” Gorbachev declared in a toughly worded speech to the Communist Party Central Committee.

“This is to be seen if only from the fact that it refuses in general to discuss the question of preventing the arms race from spreading to space simultaneously with the discussion of the question of nuclear arms limitation and reduction.

‘Interconnection’ Seen

“It thus violates the accord, reached in January, on the interconnection of the three subjects--on prevention of an arms race in space, on nuclear strategic arms reduction and reduction of medium-range nuclear armaments in Europe.”

Whether such an accord was ever reached depends upon which side is doing the interpretation.

After meeting Jan. 7-8 in Geneva, Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko issued a joint communique agreeing “that the subject of the negotiations will be a complex of questions concerning space and nuclear arms . . . with all these questions considered and resolved in their interrelationship.”

The Soviets say that means the United States must abandon President Reagan’s research program on space-based defenses in order for there to be any progress in reducing offensive nuclear missiles.

U.S. officials, however, say that the wording simply means the United States agreed to negotiate on space research, which the Administration had previously said was not negotiable. The U.S. position is that a ban on space weapons research cannot be enforced and that the Soviet Union is already engaged in such research.

As the Soviets have done repeatedly, Gorbachev scorned the U.S. view Tuesday.

“It is impossible to reconcile an arms race and disarmament talks,” Gorbachev said, charging that “certain circles” in the United States are still seeking military supremacy.

Western diplomats said Gorbachev’s remarks were a “sharper signal” than he has sent in previous statements on the Geneva talks, which began March 12, the day after he took over the top Kremlin post.

One diplomat cautioned, however, that Gorbachev was speaking to the party’s top cadres and may have toughened his anti-American rhetoric to please some parts of his constituency.

At the same Central Committee meeting Tuesday, three allies of Gorbachev were elected full members of the Politburo in an apparent demonstration of his swift consolidation of power in the Kremlin.

Viktor M. Chebrikov, chief of the KGB security police, was promoted from his position as a candidate (non-voting) member.

Two other Gorbachev supporters--Yegor K. Ligachev and Nikolai I. Ryzhkov--were installed as full members of the Politburo directly from their posts with the party’s Secretariat. It was the first time in more than a decade that anyone has achieved this status without serving first as a candidate member.

In other personnel shifts, Defense Minister Sergei L. Sokolov was named a candidate member of the Politburo, returning armed forces representation to the group for the first time since the death of Sokolov’s predecessor, Dmitri F. Ustinov last December.

In addition, Viktor P. Nikonov, agriculture minister of the Russian Federation, was named a secretary of the Party’s Central Committee, presumably with responsibility for agriculture.

Except for Sokolov, who is 73 years old, the other new appointees are in their 50s or 60s, joining the 54-year-old Gorbachev as a new generation of Soviet leaders in power.

In other business, the Central Committee set the date of the 27th Communist Party Congress for Feb. 25, 1986. It will consider a new five-year plan for the last half of the decade and provide Gorbachev with additional opportunities to put his stamp on the party and the government.

No Mention of Summit

In his remarks on international affairs, Gorbachev made no mention of a possible summit meeting with President Reagan, previously agreed to in principle by both sides.

“Ruling circles of the U.S.A.,” he charged, “continue to come out as initiators of the arms race and sabotage disarmament. It is at their initiative that ever new types of mass destruction weapons are developed. At present, attempts are being made to spread the arms race to space. . . .

“It (the United States) constantly creates seats of conflicts and war danger, heating up the situation now in one area of the world, now in another. The United States is threatening militarily today the heroic people of Nicaragua in an effort to deprive it of freedom and sovereignty, as was the case in Grenada.”

However, Gorbachev insisted that the Soviet Union will consistently seek “concrete mutually acceptable agreements” that would end the arms race and advance disarmament. He said that a change in the U.S. position would “open an opportunity for achieving mutually acceptable accords. We, for our part, are prepared for this.”

Meanwhile, in Geneva, as the first round of the arms talks ended Tuesday, chief U.S. negotiator Max M. Kampelman made his first public comment, saying “We expected these negotiations to be difficult, and they have been.

“Nevertheless, we had an intensive set of meetings, both formal and informal,” Kampelman added in a brief formal statement after a two-hour and 10-minute meeting of the two delegations. “And we believe that the first round served a useful purpose in helping to bring about increased understanding of one another’s positions. We look forward to the resumption of our sessions when the second round opens on May 30. A great deal remains to be done.”

Stressing a confidentiality agreement with the Soviet delegation, Kampelman declined to take any questions or to say anything of substance about the 21 formal meetings in the six weeks since the talks opened on March 9.

Times staff writer Don Cook in Geneva contributed to this story.