Highlights of Reagan’s Address on the Summit

Here are highlights of President Reagan’s nationally broadcast address Thursday night on next week’s summit with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev:

PURPOSE

“My mission, simply stated, is a mission for peace,” Reagan said. “It is to engage the new Soviet leader in what I hope will be a dialogue for peace that endures beyond my presidency. It is to sit down across from Mr. Gorbachev and try to map out, together, a basis for peaceful discourse even though our disagreements on fundamentals will not change.”

The President, preparing for the first superpower summit in six years, said he hopes the meetings Tuesday and Wednesday “can begin a process which our successors and our peoples can continue.”

PROSPECTS

While saying the summit can be a historic opportunity to chart a more constructive course to the 21st Century, Reagan said, “The history of American-Soviet relations, however, does not augur well for euphoria. Eight of my predecessors . . . sought to achieve a more stable and peaceful relationship with the Soviet Union. None fully succeeded. So I don’t underestimate the difficulty of the task ahead.”

Reagan said the summit’s outcome “should not be measured by any short-term agreements that may be signed. Only the passage of time will tell us whether we constructed a durable bridge to a safer world.”

ARMS CONTROL

Reagan said he was pleased with the interest expressed by the Soviets in reducing offensive nuclear weapons, and he repeated that the United States is prepared to reduce “comparable nuclear systems by 50%.”

He said he is going to Geneva “with the sober realization that nuclear weapons pose the greatest threat in human history to the survival of the human race, that the arms race must be stopped. We go determined to search out and discover common ground where we can agree to begin the reduction, looking to the eventual elimination, of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth.

“It is not an impossible dream that we can begin to reduce nuclear arsenals, reduce the risk of war and build a solid foundation for peace,” the President said.

“While it would be naive to think a single summit can establish a permanent peace, this conference can begin a dialogue for peace,” Reagan said. “So we look to the future with optimism and we go to Geneva with confidence.”

SOVIET INTERVENTION

Reagan said that the use of force, subversion and terror “has made the world a more dangerous place. Thus, today, there is no peace in Afghanistan, no peace in Cambodia, no peace in Angola, Ethiopia or Nicaragua.”

For those countries, Reagan proposed anew a regional peace plan involving negotiations, withdrawal of all foreign troops, democratic reconciliation and economic assistance.

HUMAN RIGHTS

The President said a government that does not respect the rights of its citizens and its international commitments to protect those rights is not likely to respect other international accords.

“That is why we must and will speak in Geneva on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves,” Reagan said. “We are not trying to impose our beliefs on others. We have a right to expect, however, that great states will live up to their international obligations.”

CULTURAL EXCHANGES

While saying that new educational and cultural exchange agreements are nearly complete, Reagan said, “I feel the time is ripe for us to take bold new steps to open the way for our peoples to participate in an unprecedented way in the building of peace.”

He proposed that the two superpowers “exchange many more of our citizens” in the “broadest people-to-people exchanges in the history of American-Soviet relations, exchanges in sports and culture, in the media, education and the arts.”

Reagan said that in science and technology, “we could launch new joint space ventures and establish joint medical research projects. In communications, we would like to see more appearances in the other’s mass media by representatives of both our countries.

“If Soviet spokesmen are free to appear on American television, to be published and read in the American press, shouldn’t the Soviet people have the same right to see, hear and read what we Americans have to say?”