Kremlin Eases ‘Star Wars’ Stand, Kennedy Reports

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev told Sen. Edward M. Kennedy that Moscow is prepared to negotiate an agreement to limit intermediate-range nuclear weapons even if the United States refuses to abandon its “Star Wars” missile defense program, Kennedy said Saturday.

Talking to reporters a few hours after his return from a three-day visit to Moscow, the Massachusetts Democrat said that Gorbachev “made it clear to me in emphatic and unmistakable terms” that the Soviet Union has dropped its earlier effort to link the negotiations on intermediate-range offensive weapons to the talks on strategic defensive systems.

At the same time, Kennedy said Gorbachev hinted strongly that unless an agreement is reached on some phase of arms control, Moscow would postpone or cancel this year’s proposed summit between President Reagan and Gorbachev.

Kennedy also announced that the Soviet Union agreed to permit 25 Soviet Jewish dissidents, including one family that has been trying to emigrate for 15 years, to go to the West.

A senior State Department official said that if Soviet negotiators at Geneva take the position Kennedy attributed to Gorbachev, the United States would welcome the development.

“An agreement on INF (intermediate-range nuclear forces) is possible because the ground has been well plowed,” said the official, who declined to be identified by name. “That is the one area in which the talks are most advanced. We have always insisted that there be no linkage. If they are saying there is no linkage, we would welcome that.”

However, Kennedy said that Gorbachev showed no similar flexibility on that phase of the Geneva arms negotiations dealing with strategic arms, meaning long-range nuclear missiles. He said that the Kremlin leader repeated the familiar Soviet position that no progress on strategic arms limitation is possible unless the United States drops the “Stars Wars” program, which the Pentagon calls the Strategic Defense Initiative or SDI.

U.S. and Soviet negotiators currently are conducting three separate sets of arms control talks in Geneva. They cover long-range strategic weapons capable of spanning the distance between the United States and the Soviet Union; intermediate-range weapons capable of hitting targets in Europe, and space weaponry, including missile defense systems.

“I came away with a real sense of hope that a breakthrough can be achieved in the reduction of intermediate-range nuclear forces,” Kennedy said. “General Secretary Gorbachev said that an agreement on INF is possible even if there is no progress in the other talks.

“The general secretary also expressed the view that an agreement on INF would justify the proposed next summit meeting,” he added. “Without specific progress in one of the areas of negotiation under way in Geneva, he expressed doubt as to whether a second summit would be justified or whether it should take place at all.”

First Met in November

Gorbachev and Reagan met for the first time in Geneva last November.

Kennedy backtracked a bit, however, when reporters asked if he had meant to imply that Gorbachev would break the agreement, signed with Reagan last November, to hold a second summit meeting this year in the United States.

“He did not leave the impression that he would never meet again (with Reagan) in the future,” Kennedy said.

A Kennedy aide said later that Soviet officials had said they wanted to see signs of progress before agreeing to a date for the next summit, which the United States wants to hold in June. If there is no chance of signing an arms control pact this summer, the aide said, the Soviets indicated they would prefer to postpone the summit until such a signing was possible.

The senior State Department official confirmed that Moscow has not yet accepted the U.S. proposal for a June summit. But he said he had no information to indicate that the Soviets were tying the summit to arms control progress.

25 Soviets Allowed to Leave

Kennedy said that before he arrived in Moscow as a guest of the nominal Soviet Parliament, he submitted lists of individuals who had been denied permission to emigrate. He said that the Soviets agreed to allow 25 of the individuals to leave and that six have already done so.

He said Gorbachev said that Soviet authorities would review the other cases and permit emigration “whenever possible under Soviet laws.”

However, he said later, “I wish I could say that the general secretary’s view was more flexible on the issue of Soviet emigration. I did not get that impression.”

Jerry Goodman, director of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, who also appeared at the press conference, said the 25 individuals are members of seven families, including two that have been waiting to emigrate for a decade or more.

“It’s part of a series of moves by Soviet authorities to release famous cases when appropriate,” Goodman said. “There is no question that we welcome the releases. . . . It is important to their families, but they don’t resolve the basic issue of Jewish emigration. . . . There are 15,000 refuseniks, according to our estimates.”

Names of Emigrants

Kennedy said the individuals to be allowed to emigrate include Grigory Goldstein and his brother Isai Goldstein, both physicists who first applied to leave in 1971, and members of their families, Malka Goldstein and Avi Goldstein; Elizaveta Bykova and her mother identified only as Mrs. Kaplanovich; Joseph, Ida, Boris and Leonid Schneiderman; Polina Borisonva Boim; Yuri and Alexander Estrov; Alevtina Furdorovna Kanevskaya; German, Anna, Lilya and Yulya Genfan.

In addition, Kennedy listed six individuals who already have been allowed to leave the Soviet Union but whose departure had not previously been made public. These included the family of Lev Goldfarb, a virologist and member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, who was permitted to leave last November. Kennedy said he is expected to work in the National Institutes of Health’s Laboratory of Central Nervous System Studies in the Washington suburb of Bethesda. Also included were three members of Goldfarb’s family, Inna, Boris and Julia.

Kennedy said that Naum and Sofia Reznik were permitted to leave in December. Reznik, who first applied in 1982, is a food technology scientist. His son lives in Walnut Creek, Calif.