Expectations for Summit Dwindling : Major Differences Seen Dashing Hopes for Joint Communique

President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev are so far from agreement on any major issues that their meeting next week will probably end without a joint declaration, Administration officials said Sunday.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz indicated that the two sides may simply issue separate statements--an outcome that would demonstrate disagreement rather than agreement.

National security adviser Robert C. McFarlane was quoted as saying flatly: “There will be no communique. I think that is pandering. These two countries are starting something, they are not finishing something.”

Khrushchev’s 1960 Walkout

If the warnings are borne out, the Geneva meeting will be the first U.S.-Soviet summit with no joint declaration on points of agreement since 1960, when Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev walked out to protest U.S. surveillance flights over Soviet territory.

The Administration presented a proposed draft communique to the Soviets last week when Shultz met with Gorbachev in Moscow, but the Kremlin objected “to virtually every item,” arms control adviser Paul H. Nitze said.

“It is really a difficult thing to get an agreement at this time between the Soviet Union and ourselves on the full range of subjects that we discussed at Moscow,” Nitze said in a television interview.

“Rather than have a communique full of their positions and our positions, perhaps it’s better not to have that kind of a long, complicated document.”

Lowering Public Hopes

The officials’ comments appeared aimed partly at lowering public hopes of results from the two-day summit, which is scheduled to begin Nov. 19.

McFarlane, who spoke to a few reporters on Saturday in the guise of “a senior Administration official” but was identified on Sunday by aides, was quoted as saying that the two countries agreed during last week’s meetings in Moscow that no communique was possible.

Shultz, interviewed on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” was less definitive, suggesting that a joint communique is still possible.

“We have to report whatever happens at the big Geneva meeting, and what form that will take remains to be seen,” he said. “It depends upon what amount of things are able to be put together at that time.”

Shultz said the American and Soviet leaders might make separate statements at the end of the meeting, each summarizing his own position. He said it will be useful to discuss the two sides’ disagreements at the highest level.

“We have said from the beginning that we have to be realistic about it, that there are great differences between our two countries and that it is important . . . to have a strong conversation between the President and the general secretary (Gorbachev),” he said.

Hope for Better Ties

Shultz said the U.S. hope for the summit is that it will lead to “a more constructive and stable kind of relationship.”

He also said it is “certainly possible” that the two leaders would agree to hold annual summits.

Nitze, interviewed on ABC News’ “This Week With David Brinkley,” said the proposed U.S. draft of a joint communique amounts to a “checklist” of issues the United States wants to discuss in the Moscow meetings.

“So the secretary went down each of of the items in that communique to see the degree of convergence that we could achieve,” he said. “And it turned out it wasn’t that much.”

He said he still hopes that Reagan and Gorbachev will agree on guidelines that will “give some degree of impetus” to arms control negotiators in Geneva. But he said there is no possibility of a statement on basic principles of arms control, which some U.S. officials once sought.

“The problems involved are such that . . . you can’t get agreement that you could really rely on, just on general principles,” Nitze said.

The arms control adviser said Reagan is willing to discuss the Soviet Union’s “valid problems” with his proposal for anti-missile defenses known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars.” But he said the Administration still intends to test missile defense components from land-based facilities, despite Soviet objections.