Reagan Opens 3 Days of Talks With World Leaders From U.N. : Prepares Speech for ‘Provoking’ Soviet Response

President Reagan began three days of talks with world leaders at the United Nations today and is seeking to “provoke a response” from the Soviets with a “far-reaching, broad new initiative” in a speech to the General Assembly set for Thursday.

Reagan first met with Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead for a report on his travels to the Mediterranean to patch up relations with Italy, Egypt and Tunisia in the aftermath of Israel’s raid on PLO headquarters in Tunis and the Achille Lauro hijacking.

It appeared that Reagan, who has scheduled his first summit with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev for next month, is trying shift world attention away from arms-control efforts to the Soviet Union’s behavior worldwide.

Beyond Those Issues

White House spokesman Larry Speakes said today that in the President’s speech, “he will have a far-reaching, broad new initiative” that will go beyond the arms control issues that have so dominated U.S.-Soviet relations in recent months.

Speakes said the speech would contain “straight talk about the status of U.S.-Soviet relations. At the same time, the speech will talk about opportunities for arms control and other issues.”

He declined to further describe the initiative, but said it would “provoke a response from the Soviets.”

Reagan was skipping the United Nations’ 40th anniversary ceremonies, sending Vice President George Bush instead. The centerpiece of his third visit as President to the world organization was to be the General Assembly address Thursday morning.

Heads of State

Reagan today attended a reception and lunch with about 80 heads of state before sitting down for separate meetings with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India, President Muhammed Zia al-Haq of Pakistan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain.

In a toast at the luncheon, Reagan said “the United States believes in the United Nations and what it symbolizes.”

“We have criticized it sometimes in the past when we felt it was not all that it could be, and should be, and we have on occasion been frustrated. But we have never stopped believing in its possibilities.”

Reagan and his wife, Nancy, were to play hosts this evening at a diplomatic reception at their Waldorf-Astoria headquarters, where Reagan hoped to have an informal conversation about the Nov. 19-20 summit plans with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, who was among the invited guests.

Ortega to Appear

Officials said there were no plans for more than a receiving-line handshake with another of the guests, Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega, whose Sandinista regime has been a frequent target of Reagan’s ire.

One senior Administration official described Reagan’s U.N. visit as one of the President’s “most intense and active periods of diplomacy” and would be devoted largely to preparing for the encounter in Geneva with Gorbachev, the President’s first-ever meeting with a Soviet leader.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One leaving Washington for New York, said the agenda for the Geneva summit talks is “pretty well set in a broad way,” but he and Reagan indicated that there have been problems trying to find some areas where agreements might be reached when the two leaders sit down together.