THE SUMMIT IN TOKYO : Anti-Terrorism Campaign by U.S. May Dwarf Economic Issues

The last time the leaders of the world’s dominant economic powers went to the summit, the vexing problems that brought them together in Bonn were overshadowed by a political uproar unwittingly set off when President Reagan paid his respects at a German cemetery at Bitburg that included some graves of Hitler’s notorious Waffen SS soldiers.

Today, when the 12th seven-nation economic summit opens in Tokyo, the towering problems of trade, Third World debt and international currency values may once again play second fiddle to a political issue.

“Bonn was the Bitburg summit,” said James Eberle, director of London’s Royal Institute of International Affairs. “This will be the Tripoli summit.” Coming less than three weeks after American warplanes bombed targets in Tripoli and Benghazi, the two largest cities in Libya, the Tokyo meeting is expected to focus on U.S. efforts to present a united allied front against state-sanctioned terrorism.

Core of Negotiations

The seven leaders will also eagerly discuss the impact of the explosion at the Soviet nuclear power plant at Chernobyl in late April. Still, terrorism is likely to remain at the core of nuts-and-bolts negotiations.

The President will renew his call for the other summit nations--Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan and West Germany--to join in imposing economic sanctions against the Libyan government of Col. Moammar Kadafi, Administration sources said last week. Although the Europeans have indicated willingness for stronger cooperation since the April 15 raid on Libya, they have not changed their view that economic sanctions are ineffective, and Administration officials do not expect the President to convince them differently this week.

“We think economic sanctions can work in the case of Libya, because, unlike other countries, Libya has only one product--oil--to sell,” said a State Department official who declined to be identified by name.

“There is now a glut of oil, and the Europeans can buy from other places without forcing the price up. But they have other reasons why they do not like economic sanctions, and that is why they are now pressing political measures to stop Libyan terrorist activities.”

With economic sanctions out of the picture, the United States at least wants the summit to produce a strong public denunciation of state-sponsored terrorism, which American officials would regard as a tacit after-the-fact approval of the U.S. attack on Libya.

And beyond that, U.S. officials will be pressing for private commitments of cooperation in a number of specific ways and an understanding that alliance members will moderate their criticism of each other.

Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert with the Rand Corp. who returned last week from two weeks in Europe, predicted that the United States will get much of what it wants despite the public anger abroad over the U.S. raid. European leaders, he said, not only want to hold the alliance together but also hope that they can use the summit to forestall further unilateral military action.

Although the format for the economic summit provides an opportunity for spontaneous exchanges between the leaders, the Tokyo session has been carefully choreographed. A draft of a consensus declaration on terrorism was being circulated among members as Reagan made his leisurely way across the Pacific. At the same time, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, FBI Director William H. Webster and State Department terrorism expert Robert B. Oakley conferred with their counterparts in Europe.

Besides achieving a united front with a new anti-terrorist declaration later this week, the United States hopes to gain agreement that alliance members will cooperate in using civil aviation sanctions to bring pressure on terrorist states. The United States wants the allies to ban the airlines of countries sponsoring terrorism and to refuse to allow their own airlines to fly into countries where terrorism is condoned.

Reagan and his aides will also seek a cooperative effort to develop an international blacklist that would enable authorities to keep track of terrorists who move from country to country and operate under cover of diplomatic positions.

U.S. officials view the Tokyo summit as a step toward creation of an international anti-terrorist community, which they hope to expand beyond the seven-nation economic summit group.

The longer-range American strategy, one official said, is to follow the summit with a meeting of terrorism experts from the seven countries and to obtain agreement on cooperative counterterrorist measures. Once the seven summit leaders have put their joint programs into place, a larger international organization of “like-minded countries” would enter into an anti-terrorist pact.

“We have to be able to develop some cooperation first among the countries we are dealing with,” a State Department official said. “It’s not the kind of plan you take to the United Nations, so the only mechanism at the moment is the summit seven. It is the only place where we and the Europeans and the Japanese are talking.

“We are seeking the establishment of a body of like-minded countries where we can talk about common problems and develop common approaches to dealing with these problems.

“For example, look at the past problems with security at the Athens airport and the feeling that something must be done about them. Right now, we can deal bilaterally with the Greeks, and we can talk with the British and the French and the Germans, but that is not developing a common plan for action.”

Immediately after the raid on Libya, the reaction in Europe suggested that Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who gave permission for British-based U.S. planes to participate in the raid, would find themselves on the defensive in the Tokyo terrorism discussions.

But Administration officials and supporters of Reagan’s decision to use military force, in retaliation for what the United States has termed Libyan involvement in the bombing of a West Berlin discotheque April 5, now insist that the United States has entered a new phase of its battle against terrorism and is positioned to pressure the allies for stronger measures of their own.

All the European nations participating in the summit already have cut back the size of the Libyan embassies in their countries. More than that, Administration officials--including the FBI’s Webster--say that Europe has grown more willing to share intelligence on terrorist activities.

“We have passed a milestone,” said Ray S. Cline, a former deputy director of the CIA who is now at the Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I am positive that part of the incentive to violence has been the careful observation by our enemies, including maverick states like Libya, that the United States never does anything, that we talk but we do not act. I believe it was absolutely essential at some point for the President to take some action.”

Other terrorism experts say the problems between the United States and the Europeans stem more from philosophical differences than from European questioning of American resolve. And nowhere is the disagreement sharper than on the question of economic sanctions.

The Reagan Administration maintains that Kadafi’s Libya, which depends heavily on its oil exports, mostly to Europe, is a case in which economic sanctions would have a devastating effect. On the other hand, no European country sends more than 2.5% of its exports to Libya, and in four--Greece, Turkey, Italy and Spain--the Kadafi regime accounts for only 1% of their exports.

G. Henry M. Schuler, a Libya specialist at Georgetown’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that Europe easily could go elsewhere to buy the oil it now gets from Libya.

“Kadafi cares nothing about diplomatic intercourse,” he said. “All of his embassies . . . can be closed, and he doesn’t care. All he cares about is commerce, and until people are willing to disrupt that, the rest of it is just a fig leaf.”

Besides their conviction that economic sanctions would have no impact on Kadafi, however, the European allies have rejected U.S. entreaties to join in sanctions because five American companies--Occidental Petroleum Corp., Conoco-Du Pont, Marathon-U.S. Steel, Amerada Hess and W.R. Grace--continue to operate in Libyan oil fields.

“It is not a question of why the Europeans are being timid,” Schuler said. “The question is, why we are being so timid? Why is Occidental still there? Why is W.R. Grace still there? It’s not reasonable to expect the Europeans to act until we act.”

The Administration’s response is that the companies were given a license to continue operating--with foreign nationals as their employees--because abandoning their equipment would provide Kadafi with an economic windfall. But Schuler estimated that the five companies paid Libya $2 billion in taxes last year--revenue that Kadafi would lose if the companies pulled out.

The Administration must decide next month whether to extend the five companies’ licenses to stay in Libya.

“Until we get them out of there, there is no prospect of accomplishing anything,” Schuler said. “Only then can we start to lean on the Europeans. That is the only way we are going to get anywhere.”