Reagan Plans Radio Address to Soviet People

President Reagan on Saturday will deliver a 10-minute radio speech intended for the Soviet people on “his hopes for peace, his hopes for a successful summit” with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said Thursday.

Normally, the President’s weekly addresses run five minutes and generally are carried by a number of U.S. radio stations.

But his speech Saturday will be carried on a global radio broadcast by the Voice of America, in English, Russian, and 40 other languages and will be carried on a U.S. Information Agency television broadcast to Europe, the White House spokesman said.

Appeal to Soviets

Speakes said the United States has asked the Soviet Union not to interrupt the broadcast by electronic jamming--a practice the Soviets have never admitted carrying out.

Reagan’s address will be delivered from USIA studios in Washington, beginning at 9:06 a.m. PST, the same hour as his other weekly radio addresses. It will also be broadcast in the United States.

“We hope that the Soviets will take this occasion to halt their jamming and this, we hope, would lead to a permanent” decision to end such interruptions “so that the Soviet people can hear this message from the American President,” the White House spokesman said.

“The willingness to do so on the part of the Soviets would be an important start in improving the free flow of information between our two countries,” Speakes said.

Asked whether the delivery of the speech, directed principally at the Soviet people, would be seen as a provocation 10 days before the start of the summit conference in Geneva on Nov. 19, Speakes replied:

“We don’t think an American President speaking of his hopes for peace, his hopes for a successful summit, could in any way be provocative.”

Reagan last attempted to directly reach both the Soviet Union and a global audience in a broadcast speech on Sept. 24, 1983, marking the 40th anniversary of the Voice of America, which broadcasts a daily fare of music and U.S. and international news from its headquarters in Washington.

Speakes said the 1983 speech was jammed “to some extent.”

He said that in addition to a Russian translation, Saturday’s speech will be broadcast in a variety of other languages spoken in the Soviet Union, and that the English version will also be beamed to the Soviet Union, following standard VOA practice.

“The broadcasts in Russian and other languages are normally jammed. English is not,” he said.

He said that the anticipated VOA audience is 120 million, not including viewers on USIA’s Worldnet broadcast and listeners on U.S. commercial radio stations.

Navy Talks Resumed

In another development in U.S.-Soviet relations, the Pentagon announced the resumption of talks between the two nation’s navies on avoiding incidents at sea.

The talks were broken off last spring, after U.S. Army Maj. Arthur D. Nicholson Jr. was shot to death in East Germany by a Soviet sentry while Nicholson was on duty with the U.S. military liaison team there.

In response to the shooting, the United States halted social events associated with the periodic talks, and the Soviets balked at attending.

Pentagon spokesman Robert Sims said the meetings will resume Monday in Washington. Another Pentagon spokesman said that while there will be “no unusual socializing” by the 8- to 11-member delegations, there will be “appropriate” social events. He would not elaborate.

Sims also announced that a successful test of an upgraded U.S.-Soviet hot line, in which pictures, graphs, maps, charts and other documents could be transmitted, was carried out late last month.

He said neither the resumed Navy conference nor the announcement of the hot-line test was tied to the approaching summit and thus did not reflect a deliberate effort to smooth relations before the meeting.

But the low-key tone of the announcements may have been directed at avoiding anything that could potentially upset the delicate balance.

Soviet Wishes

One Pentagon official, speaking on the condition that he not be identified by name, said the Defense Department was intentionally playing down the hot-line test because the Soviets do not “want to be seen as making major agreements . . . suggesting cooperation with us.”

Before the facsimile capability could be met at both ends of the hot line, which is intended to provide reliable communications between U.S. and Soviet leaders during crises, the United States had to make available to Moscow high-technology equipment that U.S. officials said did not exist there.

A more extensive test is scheduled to be carried out in January, and Pentagon officials said they hope to have the upgraded system in operation by late 1986 or early 1987.