Reagan Criticizes Disaster Secrecy : Soviets ‘Owe World an Explanation’ for Chernobyl Blast, President Says

President Reagan, pressing a concerted Administration campaign to force the Soviet Union to disclose details of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Saturday accused Moscow of disregarding “the legitimate concerns of people everywhere.”

“A nuclear accident that results in contaminating a number of countries with radioactive material is not simply an internal matter,” Reagan declared in his regular Saturday radio address, which was taped in Tokyo where he and the leaders of six other major industrialized democracies will open their 12th economic summit meeting today.

“The Soviets owe the world an explanation,” the President said. “A full accounting of what happened at Chernobyl and what is happening now is the least the world community has a right to expect.”

His Sharpest Criticism

The radio speech was the sharpest criticism the President has made of the Soviet Union since the Kremlin reluctantly disclosed last Monday that one of the four nuclear reactors at the electric power plant near Kiev in the Ukraine was on fire. The disclosure came only after Sweden detected high-level nuclear pollution in the Scandinavian atmosphere--and at least two days after an explosion occurred at the the plant, discharging clouds of radioactive contaminants.

Reagan said that Americans sympathize with those affected by the Chernobyl disaster and that the United States stands ready to assist in any way it can. But he added, “The contrast between the leaders of free nations meeting at the summit to deal openly with common concerns and the Soviet government, with its secrecy and stubborn refusal to inform the international community of the common danger from this disaster, is stark and clear.”

The original text of Reagan’s radio address contained none of the harsh words that he eventually used about Soviet secrecy, but a senior Administration official, speaking on condition that he not be identified, said the President and his aides decided on the tougher approach Friday while traveling to Tokyo aboard Air Force One from Bali, Indonesia.

They decided to take a tough stance against the Soviets’ handling of the disaster after determining that the topic would eclipse economics at the summit in any event and that the Soviets were vulnerable in the eyes of the world community for withholding information on a catastrophe that has broad international consequences.

“The address had already been put to bed,” the official said, “but there was general agreement the President couldn’t ignore the week’s No. 1 news story in the world and the issue that will dominate the summit.”

Another official, who also declined to be identified, said Administration officials have decided to emphasize the Chernobyl incident, international terrorism and other political issues at the summit because “economic issues generate nothing but yawns at home.”

Reagan, questioned after the radio speech at a reception he gave for Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi at the U.S. Embassy here, denied Soviet charges that the United States has exaggerated the seriousness of the nuclear accident. “Maybe they would not have any problem if they would come forward and tell everybody exactly what happened,” he said.

‘A Little Mistrustful’

Asked why the Soviets have not been forthright, Reagan said, “Hasn’t that been rather their way about many things in their own country? They are a little mistrustful of all of us.”

With the summit scheduled to open formally with a dinner tonight attended by Reagan and six other leaders, most of the preliminary discussions in bilateral meetings here centered on the nuclear accident and international terrorism.

Besides Reagan and Craxi, the summit participants are Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, French President Francois Mitterrand and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

After an hourlong meeting between Reagan and Nakasone, a Reagan Administration official said the two leaders agreed that international terrorism is perhaps the most important topic that will be discussed at the summit.

‘Sympathetic Understanding’

The official said Nakasone showed “a sympathetic understanding” of the circumstances that led the United States to bomb terrorist targets in Libya on April 15. However, at another briefing on the Reagan-Nakasone meeting, a Japanese Foreign Ministry official said Nakasone had emphasized that he sympathized not with the decision to bomb Libya but “with the circumstances that led the United States to come to the judgment that it had to take the action that it did.”

Asked how Reagan had reacted to Nakasone’s comment, the Foreign Ministry official said, “I think he was smiling benignly.”

Among the leaders here, only Thatcher, who allowed U.S. bombers based in Britain to take part in the attack on Libya, has unequivocally endorsed the Libyan raid.

Thatcher has also joined in the campaign of criticism against the Soviet Union for its handling of the Chernobyl accident.

Stopover in Korea

Meeting the press during a stopover she made in Seoul, South Korea, Thatcher said that the Soviet Union had been expected to be more open under its new leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, but that its handling of the Chernobyl accident “has demonstrated to the rest of the world that the Communist system is still the same as it was.”

Thatcher suggested that Soviet secrecy in the matter will have “a great impact” on the U.S.-Soviet arms control talks that will resume shortly in Geneva because it underscores the importance of verification in any arms control agreement.

A Reagan Administration official also said that the Chernobyl incident “will have important implications” for the arms talks. “The President is clearly disappointed that the Soviets have failed to respond adequately, either privately or publicly, to our requests for full disclosure,” the official said.

Problem of Verification

And Secretary of State George P. Shultz said Saturday that while Chernobyl has no “one-on-one connection” with the arms control process, “the problem of verification is a very important problem” that must be addressed completely before any arms control agreement can be reached.

Perhaps more than any previous Soviet leader, Gorbachev has recognized the importance of the verification issue, even to the point of talking about on-site inspections, Shultz said, expressing the hope that “we can get to that point.”

The White House press office also distributed a “fact sheet” to reporters covering the summit that listed “International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards” on nuclear accidents.

The document declared that while the Soviet Union would not be bound by any international agreements to make a full disclosure of the circumstances of the Chernobyl incident, “it is a principle accepted in customary international law that an incident likely to have trans-boundary effects” should be disclosed “in a timely fashion.”

Reporting of Accidents

There is a system for reporting nuclear accidents that is coordinated through the Paris-based OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, according to the fact sheet, but it covers only the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which are the nations of Western Europe as well as the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. The Nuclear Energy Agency has agreements to exchange data with the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, of which the Soviet Union is a member.

Both the United States and the Soviet Union individually allow the IAEA to inspect non-weapons-producing reactors for safeguard purposes to assure against the diversion of nuclear material for other than peaceful purposes. But the inspections are not intended to monitor safety conditions.

While the Soviet Union has designated only “certain of its reactors” for such inspections, the Administration reported, the United States has allowed all of its power plants to be inspected.