Reagan Scores Clear Victory as Soviets OK Acceleration of Arms Talks

For President Reagan, his summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev ended Thursday with a clear victory on the all-important issue of nuclear arms control.

To the astonishment of even some U.S. officials, Gorbachev signed a joint statement, agreeing to accelerate negotiations on 50% cuts in offensive weapons, that does not include a single mention, critical or otherwise, of Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, the proposed “Star Wars” missile defense system.

For Gorbachev, the new Kremlin leader still concerned with consolidating his power, the final communique represented tangible evidence to take home showing that he can cope with the Americans on foreign policy while he tackles a welter of domestic economic and social problems.

To have insisted on an anti-’Star Wars’ statement in the communique might have ended any chance for a joint declaration. This may have been why he reserved his criticism of the “Star Wars” proposal for a later news conference at which he reiterated the longstanding Soviet objections to the program.

2 Issues Deflected

The final statement also represents a successful effort by Gorbachev to deflect criticism on two sensitive issues. Human rights and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan were brushed over with one bland sentence each.

What made this speedy and mutually successful outcome possible was the fact that, in the end, neither side insisted on the “maximalist” negotiating goals it had staked out before the summit began Tuesday.

Reagan, for example, could have refused to put a good face on their personal diplomacy unless Gorbachev agreed on Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and an end to construction of the Krasnoyarsk radar installation in Siberia, which the Administration sees as the most glaring Soviet violation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

On the other side, the Soviets could have demanded a halt to the Strategic Defense Initiative, which they allege constitutes a plan to violate the same treaty. They might also have called for a halt to U.S. support for Afghan rebels in their backyard.

Reagan Chose Restraint

However, neither side wanted the deadlock that such confrontations would have risked, and Reagan--who seems clearly to have had the advantage at the summit--apparently chose not to push the Soviets to the wall.

“The agreement squeezes them a little,” one U.S. diplomat acknowledged privately. But, he implied, the President stopped short of driving too hard a bargain in the interest of establishing a long-term relationship.

“I came to Geneva to seek a fresh start,” Reagan said at the summit-closing ceremony here Thursday morning, “and we have done this. . . . I’m convinced that we are heading in the right direction.

“The real report card on Geneva,” he cautioned, “will not come for months or even years. We know the questions that must be answered.” These are, he said, whether arms are reduced, regional conflicts peacefully resolved, liberty advanced and treaties fulfilled.

The American and Soviet peoples, he said, are “ready to answer yes.”

‘New Start’ for Relations

Gorbachev nodded agreement with those remarks as Reagan resumed his seat, and later, in their sixth and last meeting, the 54-year-old Soviet leader raised his glass in a champagne toast to the summit with these words:

“This gives a new start in the right direction to our relationship.”

The basic problems of the relationship remain unresolved, however. “The world has become a safer place,” Gorbachev claimed in his news conference later. But palpable evidence for that happy conclusion was sometimes hard to find here.

On arms control, for instance, Gorbachev repeated the long-standing Soviet position--in the summit meetings and afterwards--that cuts in Soviet offensive nuclear arms will not be made unless and until the Strategic Defense Initiative program, including research work, is stopped.

And Secretary of State George P. Shultz said that, despite the “great intensity” with which the issue was discussed, “the President feels as strongly as ever” that the SDI program must go forward as planned.

Movement on Arms Seen

Nonetheless, in the communique, the two sides did move significantly forward on arms control talks in ways that add up to greater success at the summit than Administration officials had expected last week. As one elated senior official said:

“A joint statement that says . . . (the Soviets) commit to the U.S. agenda (on offensive arms control) without expressing Soviet objections about SDI is a little bit astonishing, and impressive, and I’ve got a lot of other adjectives.”

The same official, reminded that the pre-summit discussions Shultz held in Moscow three weeks ago had produced only gloomy forecasts for the main event, was asked what had changed so radically. “It was time to send in the first string,” he joked.

Arms control talks were advanced in at least three ways in the communique:

“They agreed to accelerate the work of the negotiators,” the communique said, at the arms talks that began here last March and are scheduled to resume next January. Those talks, the communique said, are intended “to prevent an arms race in space and to terminate it on Earth, to limit and reduce nuclear arms and enhance strategic stability.”

This language on the aim of the negotiations was precisely the same, except for verb tenses, as that used in the joint U.S.-Soviet communique last January that set up the format for the arms talks.

And although the Pentagon had not wanted it reaffirmed--because the Soviets have cited it repeatedly in propaganda aimed at stopping ‘Star Wars’--Reagan would have set back the negotiations or even killed them if he had tried to renege at the summit.

Concession by Soviets

In what was clearly another concession by the Soviets, the two sides also called for “early progress” in the arms talks, particularly on the principle of 50% cuts in the nuclear arsenals of both sides, “appropriately applied.”

Last January’s joint communique set up the arms talks in three forums--long-range offensive weapons, intermediate-range offensive missiles and space arms. And it specified that all three topics would be “considered and resolved in their interrelationship.” This meant, the Soviets said then, that agreements on offensive weapons could be reached only in tandem with agreements curbing space arms work.

Now the Soviets have sanctioned speedy talks on the offensive cuts without reference in the formal joint statement to curbs on “Star Wars.” Moreover, they accepted the phrase saying that the offensive weapon cuts should be “appropriately applied.”

This related to the Soviet offer of 50% cuts two months ago that counted intermediate-range missiles and gravity bombs on U.S. fighter-bombers in Europe as part of the overall U.S. strategic arsenal. By accepting the phrase about appropriateness, Gorbachev appeared to show willingness to count only the long-range weapons on both sides.

Finally, the communique called for early progress on “the idea of an interim INF agreement.” INF stands for Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces, which consist most importantly of Soviet SS-20 missiles and U.S. Pershing 2 and cruise missiles in Europe.

By agreeing to separate the intermediate-range talks from the other arms negotiations in Geneva, the Soviets are also accepting an Administration preference. These talks are being conducted by the United States on behalf of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the Administration felt that removing the intermediate-range forces from such a direct link to strategic offensive and space defense issues would facilitate an agreement.