Reagan and Gorbachev to Exchange TV Talks : In First Such Event, Each Leader Will Deliver New Year’s Greetings to the Other’s Nation

Continuing “a spirit of good relations” born during their Geneva summit meeting, President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev will extend brief televised greetings to each other’s nation on New Year’s Day, the White House announced Friday.

Plans for the exchange, the first of its kind, were disclosed as Reagan and his wife, Nancy, flew to California for their annual New Year’s visit to the Palm Springs estate of publisher Walter H. Annenberg.

The Reagans will spend the last days of 1985 in their home state before the President flies to the Mexican border town of Mexicali next Friday for a four-hour summit with Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid.

First Since 1972

The exchange of U.S.-Soviet New Year’s greetings, with each leader to speak no longer than five minutes, will mark the first time an American President has spoken by television to the Soviet people since President Richard M. Nixon did so in May, 1972, during a Moscow summit. And it will be the first such talk by a Soviet leader since Leonid I. Brezhnev spoke to the American people in June, 1973, from San Clemente, where he was visiting Nixon.

The two nations have traded written New Year’s messages before, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said, but have not previously exchanged televised greetings.

American officials began pressing for a chance for Reagan to speak on Soviet television about a year ago, when U.S. Information Agency Director Charles Z. Wick made the proposal in a note to Soviet leaders. Then, shortly before Reagan and Gorbachev met at Geneva in November, Speakes said, the United States suggested a broadcast exchange on New Year’s Day.

“We got a positive response from the Soviets in the last three or four days and we were working through yesterday to work out the details,” Speakes told reporters Friday aboard Air Force One during the Reagans’ flight to Los Angeles.

The White House did not disclose what Reagan plans to say in his short speech to the Soviet people, but Speakes said, “We feel that both sides will be extending greetings in a spirit of good relations.”

The spokesman said the United States is “reasonably sure” that the Soviets will broadcast Reagan’s remarks uncensored and complete. Each nation will provide a written translation of its own leader’s greetings in advance and will tape spoken “voice-over” translations of the other leader’s remarks.

Interview Trimmed

Last month, Pravda, the official newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party, omitted significant portions of a lengthy interview that the President had granted to Soviet print journalists.

Speakes said Gorbachev’s message probably will be taped this weekend and delivered by diplomatic courier to Washington, where the State Department will make it available to U.S. television and radio broadcasters.

Before the planned exchange of greetings was announced, Gorbachev told foreign diplomats at a Kremlin reception Friday that the United States should “follow the Soviet Union’s good example and end all nuclear explosions.” The Soviets’ unilateral moratorium on nuclear tests, which began Aug. 6, will expire Jan. 1. It will be extended, according to the Kremlin, only if the United States joins the ban.

In Moscow, the greetings exchange was announced by Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Lomeiko at a hastily called news conference.

Taping in L.A.

Reagan is expected to tape his message of New Year’s greetings today at the Century Plaza Hotel, where he and Mrs. Reagan are spending two days before going to Palm Springs. The President’s videotape recording will be sent to Washington by Air Force jet and delivered to the Soviet Embassy for forwarding to Moscow, Speakes said.

Both messages will be made available for radio and television broadcast Wednesday at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. in Washington and 9 p.m. in Moscow.)

The videotaping and Reagan’s regular Saturday radio address are expected to be the President’s only public activity for most of the next week.

The Reagans will spend Saturday at the 8,000-square-foot presidential suite at the Century Plaza, probably greeting a few friends and preparing for Sunday’s short trip to the desert.

Mrs. Reagan lately has been searching for a home for the couple when Reagan leaves the presidency and retires to California in January, 1989, but she is not expected to do any house-hunting on this trip. The Reagans sold their Pacific Palisades home after moving to Washington in 1981 and do not plan to use their ranch house near Santa Barbara as a full-time residence.

Annual Golf Game

In Palm Springs, the Reagans will spend five days at Sunnylands, the walled, guarded Annenberg estate, where the President is expected to play his “annual round of golf” on the estate’s nine-hole course, Speakes said.

If they follow past ritual, the couple will attend a dinner with 80 or so friends at the city’s exclusive El Dorado Country Club, then go to a New Year’s Eve party at the Annenberg home.

The Dec. 31 party is usually attended by longtime Reagan friends and political allies, including CIA Director William J. Casey, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and former Reagan Cabinet members William French Smith and William P. Clark.

At the Mexicali summit next Friday, Reagan and De la Madrid are expected to discuss immigration, Mexico’s mounting foreign debt and economic problems, and the Central American military situation. Reagan is scheduled to return to Washington aboard Air Force One late Friday.

Mrs. Reagan plans to skip the Mexico stop and, instead, will visit her ailing 89-year-old mother in Phoenix.