Gorbachev Appeals to Reagan on Arms Tests : Urges U.S. to Join Nuclear Moratorium

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev appealed to President Reagan on Wednesday to join the Kremlin’s moratorium on nuclear tests as a way to build trust after their Geneva summit.

While declaring that the meeting had a positive, stabilizing effect, Gorbachev also renewed his warning that arms reductions will be impossible if Reagan goes ahead with his Strategic Defense Initiative.

“We hope what was said in Geneva on SDI is not the last word,” Gorbachev said, referring to Reagan’s refusal to give up plans for the space-based missile defense system nicknamed “Star Wars.”

Gorbachev delivered a wide-ranging report to the 1,500 members of the Supreme Soviet, the nominal parliament, a week after his three days of talks with Reagan.

He departed from his prepared text to urge the United States, along with other nuclear powers, to agree to a test ban that might allow some form of international verification to prevent cheating.

The Soviet Union announced last August that it had suspended nuclear tests until Jan. 1, and Gorbachev said then that the moratorium would be extended if the United States would also refrain from testing.

In the past, the Reagan Administration has said it must detonate nuclear explosions to catch up with Soviet advances in weaponry.

The State Department said Wednesday that it had not seen an official text of Gorbachev’s speech and would reserve comment until it had.

“We placed this (test ban) proposal before the President in Geneva,” Gorbachev said. “His answer was silence . . . .

“There is still time and I think the leaders of the United States and other nuclear powers would agree to it if they understood their responsibility before the world,” he added.

“This is an appeal from the Supreme Soviet to come to agreement on this major issue of modern times,” he concluded.

Although his power comes from his job as general secretary of the Communist Party, Gorbachev is also a deputy of the Supreme Soviet and a member of its Presidium.

Summit a Major Event

On the positive side, the Soviet leader said, the Geneva sessions, including five hours of private talks with Reagan, were a major event.

“We value the personal contact established with the U.S. President,” he said of his first meeting with Reagan and the first conversation between top Soviet and American leaders since 1979.

“It is important that the dialogue did take place; it is in itself a stabilizing factor in our difficult times.

“But we are realists and must say directly that solutions to major problems related to ending the arms race were not found at the meeting,” he added.

Gorbachev said the real test of Geneva’s value would be whether the superpowers could agree on concrete steps to reduce nuclear arsenals.

Joint Statement Praised

But he praised the understanding recorded in their joint statement, which declared that neither side would fight a nuclear war or try to attain military superiority.

In a way, Gorbachev was justifying his trip to the summit despite the lack of agreement on arms control measures that he had established in advance as his major goal in Geneva.

The party leader received a standing ovation at the conclusion of his speech. The deputies, some of whom were reading newspapers or talking with neighbors during talks by other officials, listened attentively to Gorbachev.

Speech Runs 70 Minutes

There was a hush in the hall as he put on reading glasses and, armed with a red-covered notebook, began his 70-minute address.

As Gorbachev told it, the United States was forced back to the arms negotiations in Geneva last March by the pressure of public opinion. Western diplomats said, however, that it was the Soviet Union that bowed to world opinion and decided to return to the arms talks after its walkout at the end of 1983.

In a new sidelight to his view that both the Soviet Union and the United States must accept strategic parity rather than seek military superiority, Gorbachev added:

“We would not like, for instance, a change of the strategic balance in our favor . . . because such a situation will enhance suspicion of the other side, will enhance instability of the overall situation.”

Welcoming “certain elements of realism” in Reagan’s remarks last week, Gorbachev said: “The general balance sheet in Geneva is positive.” But he said the Soviet and American views of regional conflicts are completely at odds. The U.S. view is colored by its “imperialist” outlook, he said, while the Soviets will not agree to abandon friendly nations fighting to protect their independence.

Speaking of Afghanistan, Gorbachev repeated the long-held Soviet view that a political solution could be achieved if the United States first would halt its support of anti-government guerrillas now fighting an estimated 115,000 Soviet troops.