Superpower-Imposed Solutions : Reagan Departs From Longstanding Policy

President Reagan’s proposal for a joint U.S.-Soviet “regional peace process” to settle civil wars and local armed conflicts is a sharp departure from a longstanding American policy of avoiding even the appearance of superpower-imposed solutions to regional problems.

And in focusing exclusively on insurgencies against Soviet-backed Marxist governments in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Angola and Nicaragua, Reagan in effect called on Soviet client states to negotiate with rebel groups about the division of political power. This is an approach he has always ruled out for armed leftist guerrillas whom the United States has accused of trying to shoot their way to power in El Salvador and elsewhere.

Broadening Possible

Presented in such limited terms, the plan Reagan presented to a session of the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday seems to contain little that would interest the Soviets.

Viewed, however, as an opening gambit in possible future talks with Moscow, the Reagan plan may prove to be negotiable. And Administration officials, in discussing the President’s proposal, indicated that the United States might later be prepared to broaden its consideration of regional conflicts.

Moreover, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, in his own speech to the United Nations, also called for new approaches to settle local wars which he said can inflict “enormous” suffering. But Shevardnadze made it clear that the Soviet Union’s list of regional problems is very different from that of the United States.

Any such Soviet list would be likely to include the Middle East and El Salvador. In the Middle East, the Administration always has opposed direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization because of PLO terrorism.

In El Salvador, the United States supported talks last year between pro-Western President Jose Napoleon Duarte and leaders of the leftist insurgency. But the talks got nowhere, breaking down, among other reasons, over rebel demands for power-sharing and for an eventual merger of rebel soldiers and the government armed forces.

U.S. officials have insisted in the past that rebels should not be allowed to gain political acceptance through the barrel of a gun.

Both Reagan and Shevardnadze acknowledged that regional fighting, if allowed to rage out of control, eventually could draw the United States and the Soviet Union into armed conflict.

As he outlined it Thursday, Reagan’s plan would start with direct negotiations among the parties to a regional conflict. But he made it clear that later talks between Washington and Moscow also would be essential.

U.S. and Soviet officials have conducted a series of regional discussions over the last six months on issues affecting the Middle East, southern Africa, Afghanistan and East Asia. Talks on Central America and the Caribbean are scheduled for later this month.

But U.S. officials, clearly hoping to reassure allies such as Israel that Washington would not cut a deal at their expense, stressed that the Middle East talks were only exchanges of views and were not to be considered negotiations. The officials said that the United States had no intention of changing its position as a result of the talks and that it did not expect the Soviet Union to change either.

Reagan’s U.N. speech focused on what he called “the consequence of an ideology (Marxism) imposed from without, dividing nations and creating regimes that are, almost from the day they take power, at war with their own people.” These conflicts pose a danger to world peace, he said, because “Marxism-Leninism’s war with the people becomes war with their neighbors.”

A senior Administration official said that the five conflicts cited in the speech were selected because each involves “a major Soviet military presence in which lives are being lost each day.” However, he said, the United States might also be willing to discuss “disagreements in (North and South) Koreas, southern Africa and elsewhere.”

The official said that Moscow was informed of the plan in advance of the speech. He said, “We do believe that in one or two cases there is a self-interest on the part of the Soviet Union in bringing an end to one or two of these. We can’t be sure, . . . but, yes, we believe that there is a basis for cooperation here.”

Nevertheless, academic experts on the Soviet Union--including some who applauded the Reagan speech as an effort to seize the propaganda high ground in advance of the summit--generally agreed that the plan would be unacceptable to Moscow unless Washington broadened it substantially to include matters from which the Soviets have more to gain.

Dimitri Simes, a Soviet emigre on the staff of the Carnegie Endowment for World Peace, said he doubts the proposal is negotiable because Washington and Moscow are unlikely ever to agree on which conflicts should be addressed.

“If he (Reagan) invited them (the Soviets) to the Middle East Peace table or the peace table in Central America, it would be a big mistake,” Simes said. “He didn’t commit that mistake. Because he didn’t commit that mistake, I doubt if there will be much interest in Moscow.”

Potential Danger

Ray Cline, a former deputy director of the CIA now on the staff of Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, praised the President for underlining the potential danger that regional conflicts can pose to world peace.

“If there is--as I doubt but many people hope--a change in attitude in the Soviet Union because of the change in leadership, the way to test it is in these regional conflicts, not in arms control,” Cline said.

But he expressed doubts that the Soviets would be responsive, even if Washington agreed to much wider talks.

“I assume the Soviets will give him a fairly dusky answer,” Cline said. “I’m not sure that adding more countries would have made much difference.”