Moscow Assails Attack, Cancels Shultz Meeting

The Soviet government, denouncing the American bombing of Libyan cities as a “barbarous” action, Tuesday canceled a meeting between its foreign minister and Secretary of State George P. Shultz in which preparations were to be made for a U.S.-Soviet summit.

A government statement said that “at this stage,” the air raid on Tripoli and Benghazi made it impossible for Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze to meet with Shultz from May 14 to 16, as scheduled.

The statement, carried by the official news agency Tass and read over the main evening television news program, said that unless there is an immediate halt to U.S. military strikes against Libya, “more far-reaching conclusions will have to be drawn in the Soviet Union” about U.S. attitudes.

The statement, however, did not condemn President Reagan by name, perhaps a signal that Moscow wants to preserve the possibility of a U.S.-Soviet summit this year. There was also no threat of any Soviet military retaliation for the raid, and Western diplomats said they do not expect Moscow to intervene in that way.

The Soviet government’s refusal to attend the mid-May meeting, which was scheduled only last week with the aid of the departing Soviet ambassador to Washington, Anatoly F. Dobrynin, was seen here as a clear indication of Moscow’s anger over the bombing raid.

2nd Face-to-Face Meeting

The refusal also makes it unlikely that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Reagan will get together this summer for their second face-to-face meeting, as the President had hoped. Ever since the two leaders met last November in Geneva, the Administration has been pushing for a summit in the United States in June or July.

In the United States, the consensus of Administration officials and private experts is that the U.S.-Soviet summit will still take place, probably after the November elections, unless the American confrontation with Libya escalates into much greater military conflict.

“This puts the summit on hold,” said Arnold Horelick, a former Central Intelligence Agency official and now head of the Rand Corp.-UCLA Center for the Study of Soviet International Behavior. “It puts the last nail in the coffin of a summit this summer, but unless we carpet-bomb Libya, I expect it will be held in late November or December.”

Shultz and Shevardnadze had been expected to discuss a date for a Soviet-U.S. summit and the prospects for reaching arms control agreements before the top leaders meet. Judging by the Soviet statement, however, the Shultz-Shevardnadze meeting seems to be postponed indefinitely.

‘New Criminal Action’

“American imperialism has perpetrated a new criminal action fraught with a serious threat to universal peace and security,” the Soviet statement began. “The Soviet leadership has warned that such actions cannot but affect relations between the Soviet Union and the United States.

“Unfortunately, as evidenced by the aggressive action against Libya, this warning was not heeded in Washington. In effect, the (Reagan) Administration itself has made impossible at this stage the planned meeting on the level of the ministers of foreign affairs of our two countries,” the statement added.

Tass described the U.S. attack as a “new and bloody crime,” and it recalled the March 24-25 raids by American planes on Libyan patrol boats and a missile site after the Libyans fired missiles at the planes over the Gulf of Sidra.

“Washington has elevated aggression to the status of policy,” wrote commentator Yuri Kornilov.

Reagan Called Hypocritical

The Soviet media dismissed as “groundless” Reagan’s assertions that the United States was acting in self-defense against acts of terrorism orchestrated by Libya. Tass said Reagan’s justification for the raid was “hypocritical.”

“Washington is trying hard to translate into practice its concept of ‘new globalism,’ ” the statement said. “The difference from all former variants is that the diplomacy of gunboats has given way to the diplomacy of aircraft carriers.”

Soviet television viewers were shown film of heavy damage to apartment buildings in Tripoli, together with victims being carried away on stretchers. An announcer said that apparently no Soviet citizens were injured in the raid.

The Tass statement did not actually mention the impending summit, an omission that encouraged Administration officials who acknowledged, nonetheless, that the message implied a threat to cancel the summit later.

Keeping Options Open

Both Administration officials and private experts agree that Moscow has kept its options open on the summit. While the United States prefers a summit in early summer or after the November congressional elections, the Soviets have promoted a September or October session.

“The Soviets had pretty well decided to go for the end-of-the-year summit anyway,” complained one senior Administration official, “so this was a cheap shot to save face. They unwisely are backing (Libyan strongman Moammar) Kadafi, and their weapons don’t work very well, which will cause them embarrassment. So it’s a cheapy to now say, ‘No business as usual for a while.’ ”

The Administration also refused to characterize the Soviet statement as particularly strong. But Dmitri Simes, a noted Sovietologist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said it was the harshest he had seen since 1960. In that year, Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev withdrew an invitation to President Dwight D. Eisenhower to visit the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the downing of an American U-2 spy plane over Soviet territory.

“It’s a very tough statement, very tough,” Simes said.

Welcome for Nixon

Even after the United States bombed Hanoi, the North Vietnamese capital, and mined Haiphong harbor in May, 1972, the Soviets welcomed President Richard M. Nixon to Moscow for a key summit meeting two weeks later.

“It’s the boldest step by Moscow since 1960,” Simes added, “and I don’t know why Gorbachev did it. Taking the President on because of Libya will not win Gorbachev any points in this country.”

He speculated that the harsh criticism of the United States might be a substitute for Soviet action or that Gorbachev was venting anger over the perfunctory U.S. rejection of his arms control offers.

Horelick agreed that the Soviet language was “very strong and puts Moscow in the situation where, if there is no de-escalation (of the U.S.-Libyan confrontation), it will be difficult to pick up business as usual. . . . But if Gorbachev wants out of the summit, he has the excuse now.”

William J. Eaton reported from Moscow and Robert C. Toth from Washington.