THE SUMMIT AT GENEVA : Reporter’s Notebook: Media Invasion the Biggest Geneva Has Ever Seen

Whatever its accomplishments next week, the superpower summit will go down in the record books as the biggest international media event since the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Geneva, for all its experience as a center for international diplomacy, has never seen anything like the journalistic invasion that has already begun to sweep into town three days before the summit is scheduled to begin.

Robert Vieux, the chief of protocol and information for the canton of Geneva and chief organizer of the event, has a bet with the director of Swiss television on how high the number of visiting journalists will go.

The television executive is betting that 4,000 journalists will be accredited by next week, but Vieux says he is sure the total will not be much above 3,000.

7,000 at Olympics

More than 2,600 requests for press accreditation have already been processed, and the credentials are being picked up at the international conference center, where the main press facilities are situated. There were approximately 7,000 press accreditations for the Los Angeles Games.

The American television networks are spending “more than $1 million each” on summit coverage, according to a producer here. One network has 17 camera crews available and, in all, about 160 staffers are descending on Geneva--and that does not include drivers, who have been brought in from West Germany and France together with their cars.

Geneva has been the site of hundreds, if not thousands, of conferences since the end of World War II, including the 1955 Big Four summit meeting of the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union. But it has never seen one like this--and if some Genevese have their way, they will never see another. Many of them are proud of the event, but others find it a nuisance.

When Geneva had its last summit conference, 30 years ago, television was in its childhood in the United States and in its infancy elsewhere. There was not much demand for technical facilities. But 42 foreign television chains have asked the Swiss television network in Geneva for assistance in transmitting programs on this meeting.

Officials estimate that there will be 500 television news transmissions a day once the conference gets under way. To satisfy the technical demands of television, radio and newspaper computers, the Swiss post office has used 1,200 miles of wire to set up 3,000 extra telephone lines.

A Japanese television network has solved its space problem by hiring a boat and mooring it in Lake Geneva opposite the hotel where two American networks have their headquarters.

In all, it is estimated that 12,000 people will be involved in one way or another in this two-man summit. The Swiss post office has 1,300 technicians working on telephone and telex communications. Sources at the U.S. mission here estimate that 1,200 U.S. government employees are in Geneva working in some capacity on the summit. There are 400 limousines to transport them.

Geneva, a beautifully lit city at night during the summer, usually turns dark when cool weather arrives. But the city government has decided to prolong the lighting for the summit, so that visitors at night can see such magnificent sights as the jet fountain that shoots water high above Lake Geneva; John Calvin’s St. Pierre Cathedral, dominating the oldest quarter of the city, and the grand old hotels that rim the lake.

The jet fountain has become the symbol of Geneva to many visitors. The Tribune de Geneve, one of Geneva’s four newspapers, ran a front-page cartoon Saturday showing Reagan and Gorbachav holding umbrellas to protect them from the spray of Geneva’s famous fountain. “They are arriving,” the headline said.

The Swiss army is a militia with many units headed by civilians. As a result, much of summit security will be in the hands of a banker, a politician, an architect and a chemist--the commanders of four of the five army battalions that have been put on duty in Geneva. But, just in case anyone thinks a professional is needed, the fifth battalion is headed by a career infantry officer.

Representatives of a number of human rights and pacifist organizations have come to Geneva to take advantage of the opportunity to get to the enormous press corps. Most say they have messages and petitions to deliver to President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, but they seem pleased to offer these to the journalists as well.

Officials of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies in Los Angeles said the center will make public Monday a document written by Jews in the Soviet Union describing their plight. A pacifist organization that began a walk for peace from Point Conception, Calif., early last year reached Geneva on Thursday. “Walking,” its leaflets said, “is a nonviolent form of direct action that reaches people on a very intimate level.”

Others who are expected to try to make some impact on the periphery of the summit include Avital Shcharansky, wife of imprisoned Soviet dissident Anatoly Shcharansky, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who plans to bring a nuclear test ban petition signed by a million Americans.

Robert B. Kunst of Miami, a gay rights advocate, told journalists on his arrival that he wants to persuade the United States and the Soviet Union to contribute a total of $3.6 billion toward fighting AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome).

While pacifists dominate the lobbying groups on the fringe of the summit, one organization has come to promote President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. It is “Women for Peace Through a Real Defense,” headed by conservative Phyllis Schlafly, probably the best-known anti-feminist in the United States.

The Council of State of the canton of Geneva, the French-speaking government that runs the city, issued a proclamation Friday in both English and Russian welcoming President and Nancy Reagan, Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev, all their associates and thousands of journalists to the city.

“We . . . are proud of the fact,” the councilors said, “that Mr. Ronald Reagan and Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev have chosen to meet in this city, to which history has given the honorable but difficult task of promoting harmony among peoples and efforts to achieve disarmament and peace.”