Allies Line Up Behind U.S. on Summit Stance

President Reagan basked in the glow of allied solidarity Thursday after a mini-summit with Western leaders designed to dispel concern that Moscow’s maneuvering on arms control might have sown disunity before next month’s summit in Geneva with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Administration officials declared that they won endorsement for the President’s strategy of broadening the focus of the summit agenda to include human rights, regional conflicts and other issues in addition to arms control--which the Soviets have sought to make the centerpiece of the Geneva talks.

“They expressed full support for President Reagan in his talks in Geneva,” Secretary of State George P. Shultz said after the six-nation meeting. “What they supported was the notion that all the different issues being discussed are important.”

Reagan’s meeting at the United Nations with the leaders of five other Western democracies came shortly after he delivered a speech to the U.N. General Assembly stressing that regional disputes involving the Soviet Union deserve equal time when he meets with Gorbachev on Nov. 19-20.

The allied leaders, not wanting to undercut Reagan on the eve of that important meeting--his first with the top Soviet leader since taking office--were careful to emphasize their overall endorsement of the U.S. approach.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said in a press conference that she hopes the superpower talks will “unlock the deadlock” on arms control but added that “the main regional conflicts will have to be on the agenda and be discussed. In other words, we believe these talks will have to be very comprehensive talks.”

Even Bettino Craxi, the Italian prime minister whose government fell last week as a result of his role in the release of Abul Abbas, the alleged mastermind of the Achille Lauro hijacking, seemed anxious to scramble on board the allied summit express. Craxi was in New York as Italy’s acting prime minister and is expected to be asked to assume the leadership of a new coalition government.

‘Friends as Before’

In a 20-minute private meeting, Reagan and Craxi buried the hatchet over the Abbas affair. A State Department spokesman quoted Craxi using “an old Italian saying” that means “friends as we were before.”

Although Craxi told reporters Thursday that Egyptian commandos aboard the intercepted plane threatened to use force against anyone who tried to take Abbas into custody, the Administration has maintained its objections to the way Craxi allowed the release of the Palestine Liberation Organization faction leader.

In the interest of preserving harmony between the United States and Italy, however, those objections have been put aside pending the investigation of the Achille Lauro hijacking that the Italian government has promised.

“There may have been differences,” said an official. “At no time did it ever throw the relationship in the shade.”

The White House had advance notice from Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead that Craxi was amenable to a reconciliation.

Whitehead, just back from a fence-mending trip to Italy, Egypt and Tunisia, met with Reagan in New York on Wednesday. “Whitehead gave us a heads-up that everything was good, and it was,” said a White House official.

The five leaders Reagan met with collectively as he enunciated his broadened approach to summitry included British Prime Minister Thatcher, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, in addition to Craxi. The only absentee was French President Francois Mitterrand, who claimed a previous engagement.

Before the meeting, Thatcher had expressed concern that many Third World leaders seem unaware of U.S. arms control proposals and apparently believe that Gorbachev has advanced the only reasonable offer, a proposal for a 50% reduction in offensive nuclear weapons. She urged Reagan to stress his commitment to arms reduction.

Afghanistan, Human Rights

In a briefing for reporters, Shultz defended the Administration’s apparent shift of gears to include issues as disparate as Afghanistan and human rights at the summit along with arms control.

“We have plenty we want to talk about in the field of arms control, but that’s not the only course of discussion,” he said. “We’re saying that all of these different issues are out there and, to those who would say all we should talk about is arms control, it’s important to just point to the historical experience.”

Shultz observed that “eruptions and trouble spots around the world are the chief way East-West relations have been poisoned” and that the Senate did not ratify the second strategic arms limitation treaty in 1979 because of congressional outrage over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

“Nobody is suggesting some tight linkage,” he said, “but this reality is there.”

The press peppered Reagan with questions about everything from allied solidarity to the World Series during the numerous photo sessions scheduled during his New York stay. Reagan refused to give substantive answers, but he seemed to enjoy showing off his ability to deflect the questioning with friendly jousting.

At one point, he got an uproarious laugh from Craxi when he explained: “They try to trick me. . . . It’s like playing a game with them.”

On Thursday evening, Reagan was scheduled to have what a senior Administration official initially described as “a stag dinner” with the allied leaders. Reminded that Britain’s Thatcher would be attending, the official sheepishly acknowledged: “That was a poor choice of words.”