No ’87 Summit Without One in ‘86, Reagan Says

President Reagan, frustrated by Soviet foot-dragging, declared Wednesday that he will not go to Moscow in 1987 to meet Mikhail S. Gorbachev if the Kremlin leader reneges on his commitment to visit Washington this year.

Asked at a breakfast session with reporters whether the coming summit could “slip through our fingers” because of apparent Soviet reluctance to set a firm date, Reagan said: “If it does slip through our fingers, I’ve got news for them. There won’t be an ’87 summit in Moscow.”

The President also assailed the Soviet Union for not formally replying to either his November proposal on strategic weapons or a February initiative on the elimination of U.S. and Soviet mid-range missiles in Europe. “We were the only ones playing,” he said of the latest round of arms talks in Geneva, which ended Tuesday.

The Administration would like the second summit meeting to take place before August to avoid bumping into the November election. The Soviets have indicated that they prefer September. But Reagan, his irritation showing, said Wednesday that they have not formally proposed any date.

“We’re still sticking to the early summer because of our own election,” Reagan said. “We’ve explained this to them, that this would be kind of complicated and heavy-duty for us to try and combine the two things. We have not had a formal answer one way or the other.”

The public jockeying over the summit date recalls the maneuvering that preceded the Geneva summit last November as Reagan and Gorbachev vied for position through the news media before their encounter.

As each side raised the stakes in the debate over a summit date, White House spokesman Larry Speakes stressed that the next superpower summit must take place in Washington. “If it’s not held in ‘86, it will be held in ‘87, perhaps,” he said.

Summit by Default

Some Administration officials have said that they suspect the Soviets may be delaying on setting a date to make a June or July summit logistically impossible. That way, they would win a September summit by default.

But Speakes denied that the White House is running out of time to prepare for an early session. “We just don’t have a countdown,” he said. “We can meet on short notice, and it can be profitable.”

Last week, U.S. officials were unsettled by Gorbachev’s remarks to his party congress that a second summit should be delayed until there is concrete progress on arms control.

Speakes reiterated the Administration’s opposition to such “linkage,” adding, “We believe that there is enough business of importance between the United States and the Soviet Union on a day-to-day basis that it would be practical and profitable to meet this year and to meet soon.”

Asked when the superpowers would begin to negotiate seriously on arms control, Reagan said the Soviets are to blame for stalling the talks in Geneva. He said that his November proposal on strategic arms accepted Gorbachev’s premise that there be a 50% reduction in nuclear weapons as a prelude to their ultimate elimination, but that the Soviets have refused to discuss the details of which weapons and warheads would be included.

“They just sit there with the first proposal and never open their mouths again,” Reagan said.

Sakharov Treatment

When asked for his reaction to the harsh treatment of Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov, Reagan said: “I can assure you that the general secretary of the Soviet Union knows exactly what I think of the way they’re treating not only Mr. Sakharov, but all the others that they have there in captivity.”

But he refused to be specific, claiming that “the less that I say about it publicly, the better chance we have of helping those people.”

Reagan’s comments on the Soviets and a wide range of other topics were made during a breakfast meeting with reporters in the State Dining Room of the White House. Reagan arrived wearing a big grin as he whipped out a yellow T-shirt emblazoned on the front with large black letters: S.O.B.

Reporters broke into laughter, recalling that Reagan had been caught muttering, “Sons of bitches,” into an open microphone last week when reporters peppered him with questions during a “photo opportunity.”

Reagan then turned the shirt around to reveal the flip-side message, “Save Our Budget.”