Gorbachev Asserts Peace Goals at Youth Festival

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev opened the 12th World Youth Festival on Saturday by asserting that the Kremlin’s objective is a “world without wars and weapons.”

U.S. Ambassador Arthur A. Hartman and other American officials stayed away from the festival’s opening ceremony on grounds that the event is being used for propaganda directed at the West.

Gorbachev, who interrupted his vacation to attend the opening of the weeklong festival, omitted any direct criticism of the United States in his brief remarks.

The Soviet Union, he said, favors the “complete banning and elimination” of nuclear weapons.

“Unfortunately . . . reactionary forces to which wars and the arms race bring huge benefits are still actively at work,” Gorbachev added. “These forces would like to turn back the course of history, to retain their power and privileges and dictate their will to peoples.”

Gorbachev recently accused the United States of following a warlike policy and being the greatest threat to peace. That, however, came before he agreed to a November summit meeting in Geneva with President Reagan.

An estimated 20,000 delegates from 150 nations are in Moscow for the festival under the slogan: “For anti-imperialism, peace and friendship.” Representatives from Nicaragua, waving sombreros to the crowd of 80,000 in Lenin Stadium, got the biggest applause.

An estimated 300 Americans marched in the private U.S. delegation, and an announcer told the audience that they come from many walks of life but are united in a desire for peace and international cooperation.

Gorbachev and most other members of the ruling Politburo watched the parade of delegations from a special box high above the infield.

“People will not forget that 40 years ago, the world shook from the first atomic blast,” Gorbachev said, recalling the atomic bombs dropped by the United States on Hiroshima, and later Nagasaki, Japan, during World War II.

“The echo of that blast appeals to the conscience and the reason of every upright man, and everyone should ask himself what he has done to prevent nuclear weapons from ever being put to use again,” he said.