Summit ‘Cleared Air,’ Reagan Says : But ‘There’s a Lot Still to Be Done,’ President Tells Cabinet

President Reagan told his Cabinet today that he and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev “cleared the air” during their two-day summit meeting, but he added, “There’s a lot still to be done.”

“One of the first things I told him, and I think we are agreed on that, is that words are not enough to eliminate the mistrust between our two peoples,” Reagan said.

He said that after he and Gorbachev agreed to meet again next year and in 1987, “I got his plea . . . that we keep in touch and we keep in contact in the interim.”

Reagan also said he sees no softening in Soviet opposition to his proposed space-based missile defense system.

“Not on that issue, no,” Reagan told reporters at a brief open session at the outset of a Cabinet meeting called to receive a report on the summit in Geneva this week.

Reagan’s comment came after a senior Administration official, speaking on condition that he not be named, said it was “noteworthy” that the Soviets did not insist on including in the joint statement at the end of the meetings Moscow’s criticism of Reagan’s space defense plan.

Soviets Seem Cheered

Meanwhile today, Gorbachev returned home to a nation that seemed buoyed by hopes that his Geneva summit with President Reagan will lead to better relations with the West.

The government newspaper Izvestia, in its evening edition, took the unusual step of printing front-page interviews with people who it said were stopped in Red Square and asked about the summit.

Most expressed satisfaction, pointing especially to the joint declaration that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

For the third day running, the news media dropped anti-American invective. The official news agency Tass ran lengthy quotes from Reagan’s report on Geneva to Congress on Thursday night, without adverse comment.

No media interpretation of the summit has emerged so far. Gorbachev’s opening statement at his news conference in Geneva, which appeared in all newspapers, seemed intended to guide Soviets in their assessment of the summit.

Congressional reaction to Reagan’s summit performance was generally laudatory, but the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate were cool today to the President’s offer of “open laboratories” to the Soviets so that both countries could monitor research on space defense programs.

Byrd and Dole Negative

Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), the Democratic leader, said, “I don’t like that idea.”

And Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), the Republican leader in the Senate, said he noted that “there wasn’t much applause” when Reagan mentioned the program.

The two leaders were interviewed on NBC’s “Today” program.