‘World a Safer Place,’ Soviet Leader Asserts : Gorbachev Indicates He Is Optimistic on U.S. Relations, Says Talks Included Sharp Exchanges

Although he could not persuade President Reagan to abandon “Star Wars,” Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev declared Thursday that, because of their two-day summit, “the world has become a safer place.”

“The meeting enhanced our dialogue, and that is conducive to greater security,” he said. “This makes it possible for me to look to the future with optimism. Reason should prevail” in relations between the superpowers.

Meeting for one hour and 40 minutes with journalists after Reagan had left for Washington, the Kremlin chief also reported disagreements and occasional sharp exchanges with Reagan. The one-on-one sessions with the President “were frank (and) long,” Gorbachev said. “Sometimes we had sharp discussions, sometimes we had very sharp discussions.”

One of the most contentious points, he indicated, was Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, the controversial plan for development of a space-based system to shoot down attacking missiles. The program is now in the research phase.

The joint statement issued by Reagan and Gorbachev did not mention the Strategic Defense Initiative. But Gorbachev said he told the President that the Soviet Union will not reduce its offensive nuclear arsenal until the United States drops the program commonly known as “Star Wars.”

If the President were to reverse himself and scrub SDI, Gorbachev added, the Soviet Union would open its space research laboratories to prove it was not engaged in similar missile defense experiments.

While he did not hide his disappointment at the failure to break an impasse on arms control issues, Gorbachev gave an almost entirely positive report on the summit at a closing ceremony with Reagan and later at his lengthy press conference.

“Of course, it would be much better if we could have reached agreement on the key, pivotal problems of stopping the arms race,” he said. But, after years of bitter relations, “trust is not re-established easily,” he said. “I would like to regard the meeting as a beginning of the dialogue, . . . a meeting that creates possibilities for moving ahead.”

He agreed to make his first visit to the United States next year, and Reagan promised to go to the Soviet Union in 1987 to continue the superpower summit talks that were resumed here after a six-year hiatus in such Soviet-American meetings.

But the Soviet leader emphasized his belief that the “Star Wars” program is a grave threat to world peace and would trigger an arms race in space if the United States deployed it.

“If this were done, then the scope of military rivalry would be considerably greater and the arms race could assume an irreversible direction,” Gorbachev said. “We are prepared to engage in radical cutbacks in nuclear weapons, provided that the door to unleashing an arms race in outer space be firmly slammed shut.”

Gorbachev suggested that he had tried and failed to persuade Reagan of the possible dangers in the program during more than five hours of one-on-one discussions.

“I feel the President is committed to it personally, but since he is a statesman responsible for the security of such an important state, we cannot understand his attitude,” he said. The United States, he said, should reconsider its position on the Strategic Defense Initiative and its opposition to halting nuclear testing.

Pledges Countermeasures

If the United States pursues its “Star Wars” program, he added, the Soviet Union will develop countermeasures.

“I said: ‘Mr. President, we are not naive. We are not simpletons. . . .’ It’s now clear our response (to SDI) will be effective, less costly and be put in place more rapidly, (although) we will not welcome this path.”

It was as if Gorbachev, frustrated by his inability to persuade Reagan to budge even an inch on “Star Wars,” has turned to a broader world audience in hopes of changing the President’s mind through the pressure of public opinion.

Wearing a blue pin-striped suit with striped tie, Gorbachev looked at ease in confronting an estimated 200 reporters invited to the Soviet Mission here. Then he flew to Prague, Czechoslovakia, where he briefed Soviet allies--the members of the Warsaw Pact--on the summit.

Gorbachev, who spoke extemporaneously for an hour and then answered questions for another 40 minutes, touched only briefly on regional conflicts and human rights issues. He was not asked about the widely held expectation that the summit might bring a change in the restrictive Soviet emigration policy that has prevented thousands of Soviet Jews and others from leaving his country.

Charges of Interference

Gorbachev said there has been “something of a fight” with U.S. representatives who pressed their charges of Soviet interference in regional disputes such as Afghanistan, Cambodia and Ethiopia.

“Of course, we can have disputes about the situation in different parts of the world,” he said. “But this should be done without any interference in the internal affairs of other countries.”

Arms control, he said, was the “pivotal issue” at Geneva and was taken up in each of the six private talks he had with Reagan. Gorbachev reported that he told the President he would be making a great mistake if he missed this opportunity to turn the world situation onto a more hopeful path.

Gorbachev said he hopes he has not heard “the last word” from the United States on banning of nuclear weapons tests, adding that it would represent a giant step forward if Washington joined Moscow’s moratorium in this field.

Table Thumping for Emphasis

With sweeping hand gestures, sometimes thumping the table for emphasis, Gorbachev declared:

“The time has come when the threat of nuclear holocaust compels us to learn the great, difficult art of living together. . . . For, despite all our differences, in perception and approach, we do have something in common--our understanding that nuclear war is inadmissible, that it cannot be waged and that there will be no winner in a nuclear war.”

Both sides, he said, should get accustomed to the idea of strategic parity and then try to lower arms levels on a mutual basis.

He was not asked and did not give his impressions of Reagan, although Gorbachev underlined that their extensive talks were frank, sharp and sometimes very pointed. “Yet they were, to a certain extent, productive,” he added.

He said that improvements in Soviet-American relations are possible.

“There is a mountain of problems that has to be cleared away,” he said. “But the Soviet political leadership has the will to do that work. . . . The repair work should be done together.”

Gorbachev, displaying a vigorous speaking style despite the long hours of meetings and social events this week, showed a flash of humor during his meeting with correspondents.

He recalled that a group of Nobel Prize winners asked him in Moscow last week to remain in Geneva until he reached agreement with Reagan on arms control.

“That is risky,” Gorbachev said with a broad grin. “I might never get home.”