Space Invaders Would Unite U.S. and Soviets, Reagan Says

President Reagan, trying to keep the spirit of the Geneva summit alive, told students at a Maryland high school Wednesday that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev “has held out the promise of change” and that he believes the superpowers can live in peaceful competition.

Regaling the students with tales of his private conversations with Gorbachev at last month’s “fireside summit,” Reagan said: “I couldn’t help but say to him, just think how easy his task and mine might be if suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species from another planet outside in the universe.”

He asserted: “We’d forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries and we would find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this Earth together.”

Stressed Peaceful Intent

Acknowledging that the superpowers cannot wait for “some alien race to come down and threaten us” before reaching accord, Reagan said that he stressed to Gorbachev the peaceful intent of his Strategic Defense Initiative, commonly known as “Star Wars.”

“I told him that men of good will should be rejoicing that our deliverance from the awful threat of nuclear weapons may be on the horizon,” he told the students, adding: “I could no more negotiate away SDI than I could barter with your future.”

In a 30-minute question-and-answer session with a small group of students after his formal talk, Reagan said that a recent Pentagon report showed 23 Soviet violations of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. Although the treaty, negotiated during the Carter Administration, has never been ratified by the Senate, the United States and the Soviet Union have informally agreed to abide by its terms.

The treaty expires at the end of the month, and Reagan must decide whether to extend it or to go forward with a second offensive missile system that is not permitted by the treaty--as he claims the Soviets have already done.

Won’t Be One-Sided

“There’s no way that we could be so one-sided as to be destroying missiles and . . . stay within a limit that they are violating,” he said.

Except for his tough talk on SALT II, Reagan concentrated on the peaceful and positive aspects of his “fresh start” with the Soviet Union. He urged the students at Fallston High School, a prosperous facility that sprawls over 100 acres 20 miles north of Baltimore, to become “good-will ambassadors” and to participate in his proposed “people-to-people” cultural exchanges with the Soviet Union.

“We’re still negotiating the specifics, and it remains to be seen how much the Soviets will be willing to open up their closed society,” he said. “But our objective is massive exchange programs between private citizens in both countries.” He said that scholarship funds will be established to enable “the best and the brightest” to participate.