San Diego

Linda Smith, founder of Mothers Embracing Nuclear Disarmament, has been chosen to join a special delegation of prominent American women that plan to meet with U.S. and Soviet representatives in Switzerland just prior to the start of the summit meeting in Geneva.

The delegation is sponsored by Women for a Meaningful Summit--a nationwide group formed to stop the nuclear arms buildup--and will hand-carry to the meeting petitions signed by “hundreds of thousands” of Americans who “call for substantive results from the summit and the resumption of negotiations” between the Soviet Union and the United States, Smith said.

Members of the delegation include Coretta Scott King, Rev. Imagene Bigham Stewart, national president of the American Women’s Clergy Assn., and former New York congresswoman Bella Abzug.

Smith said that the group wanted to send a delegation to the Nov. 19-20 summit meeting between President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to “reinforce our urgent hope that the superpowers will work together to make this world a safer place for our children.”

“I think the delegation will prove to be both a symbolic and substantive gesture at the summit,” Smith said.

Smith, who will leave Thursday for Washington for a meeting with the other members before flying to Geneva, said she is confident the group will either meet directly with Reagan and Gorbachev or their senior advisers.

Locally, Smith and her group MEND intend to gather about 5,000 signatures on a petition calling for a freeze on nuclear weapons. So far, about 3,000 signatures have been gathered.