Soviets Didn’t Restrain Libyans, U.S. Charges

The Reagan Administration charged today that if the Soviet Union had heeded U.S. requests to “restrain the Libyans,” a cycle of violence that led to the attack on Libya could have been avoided.

State Department spokesman Bernard Kalb said the United States informed the Soviet Union more than a week before the April 5 discotheque bombing in West Berlin that actions by Libyans were being planned in that city.

“We urged the Soviets and East Germans to restrain the Libyans,” Kalb said. “Had they done so, this entire cycle of events would have been avoided.”

Missile Supply

Kalb said the Soviets also were warned that supplying SA-5 missiles might encourage Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi to “take risks which would force us to respond. This in fact turned out to be the case.

“We have on several occasions explicitly offered to consult with the Soviet Union on the question of Libyan support for terrorist activities. They have not taken us up.”

Kalb’s remarks were prompted by reporters’ questions about the impact of a Soviet decision after Tuesday’s bomb attack on Tripoli and Benghazi to cancel a mid-May meeting between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

The Soviet Union canceled the session--to lay the groundwork for a U.S.-Soviet summit meeting this year--to protest the attack.

Soviet Pattern

Kalb said the postponement was part of a Soviet pattern of “putting off or interrupting” a superpower dialogue that has long been sought by the Administration.

He said that even after the August, 1983, Soviet downing of a Korean jetliner and the deaths of 269 people aboard, Shultz met his Soviet counterpart a week later because of “the importance of maintaining a dialogue.”

“It was our belief that an early meeting was an important way to keep the momentum of the Geneva summit, and might help deal with and perhaps head off serious problems,” Kalb said of the Shultz-Shevardnadze meeting. He noted that the United States had wanted to hold the meeting as early as January.

“Thus they have wasted six months since the summit,” Kalb said. “If they do not wish to meet, so be it. But the problems are still there. We are going to continue working on them. The Soviet Union should do likewise.”