Unity on Nuclear Safety, Terrorism Vowed at Summit

President Reagan and the leaders of six other major industrialized democracies, formally opening the 12th annual economic summit here, agreed Sunday to put up a “unified front” to combat terrorism and to strengthen safety and accident-reporting procedures at nuclear power plants.

After a dinner meeting of nearly three hours, Reagan said that the summit participants had gotten off to a good start with “very open and very strong discussions” of both major political issues.

White House spokesman Larry Speakes, relaying Reagan’s remarks to reporters at a midnight briefing, indicated that the leaders were “virtually unanimous” on the need to take specific action to fight terrorism and to prevent potentially deadly nuclear power plant accidents.

But while there was evidence of allied unity on nuclear safety, Reagan apparently failed to persuade the other heads of state to take immediate collective action to isolate the regime of Col. Moammar Kadafi, both diplomatically and economically.

But the statement will single out Libya as the source of most international terrorism. Japanese Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe, asked at a press briefing today if Libya would be named in a summit declaration on terrorism, said: “There is a reference to Libya. We are moving in that direction.”

An Administration official, briefing reporters on the condition she not be identified, said that none of the four leaders who held bilateral sessions with Reagan on Saturday and Sunday had made a commitment to take new economic or political action against Libya.

Asked if any of the leaders even thought Reagan’s proposal to sever all diplomatic and economic relations with Libya was a good idea, the official said, “Everybody said it would be a good idea to continue to share ideas on what might be done.”

Reagan has held a series of one-on-one meetings with Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. He also plans such meetings with Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and French President Francois Mitterrand.

Both the summit’s formal opening, a private dinner party attended only by the seven leaders and their interpreters, and two days of preliminary bilateral talks were devoted almost exclusively to international terrorism and to the Soviet nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, 60 miles north of Kiev in the Soviet Ukraine.

The seven leaders reconsidered the formal nuclear safety and terrorism declarations this morning but did not reach final agreement on the wording. France, West Germany and the United States all submitted new ideas on terrorism overnight, which must still be discussed.

There is reportedly some dissatisfaction with the working draft of the terrorism statement. Early today, reporters caught a glimpse of Thatcher’s copy of the draft. On its front page was a handwritten note, apparently from an aide, that said assistants to all the leaders had worked on it through the night but “it’s pretty weak.”

Unilateral Actions

Speakes said the summit leaders agreed that concrete steps can and should be taken against terrorism and that “every leader is concerned and ready to do his or her part.” Without being specific, he indicated that some leaders might be willing to take certain actions that they would not want to acknowledge publicly.

The terrorism statement, Speakes said, “would give the opportunity for the allies to work in a concerted manner to combat terrorism and at the same time it would not preclude unilateral action.”

Reagan had suggested that the summit nations close down Libya’s embassies--or People’s Bureaus, as the Libyans call them--and cut all economic ties. The United States feels that “any economic squeezing of Libya would send Kadafi a message,” Speakes said.

The statement does not go that far, however.

The Soviet Union’s failure to acknowledge the nuclear explosion until two days after it happened--and then only after Sweden had reported high levels of radiation blowing across its borders from the Chernobyl plant, more than 700 miles away--raises serious questions concerning future arms control talks, several Administration officials here said.

Questioned during a television interview about future dealings with the Soviets, White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan said: “Well, you’ll recall that we’ve been talking about verification in terms of disarmament all along. And this teaches us quite a lesson, that we have to be able to verify whatever it is that we agree to with the Soviets.”

The summit leaders, while strongly in favor of better safety and accident reporting procedures involving nuclear reactors, “stressed a need for continued use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” Speakes said., The leaders are especially concerned about the need for “timely notification” of neighboring countries when a nuclear accident occurs, Speakes said. They believe that any country that might suffer health and safety problems should be notified immediately, he said, and that the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency would be the organization best suited to initiate such an emergency notification process.

Setback for Soviets

Administration officials, convinced that the Soviets have suffered a major public relations setback because of the secrecy surrounding the nuclear disaster, continue to criticize them for failure to disclose more details.

Regan, interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said, “Frankly, the way they’ve handled it is an outrage. . . . We think that, with over a third of the world’s population directly affected by this accident, they have a moral obligation to tell the world what’s going on, and to try to stonewall it, to keep the information themselves and let the rest of the world try to figure out whether they’re in danger or not, is beyond what civilized nations should do.”

Although Kohl was the first to propose new international standards for nuclear plant safety, the other leaders were quick to take it up at the opening session, British and Canadian aides said.

“There is a clear desire to restore public confidence in the nuclear power industry, properly run,” an aide to Thatcher said.

“There will be some kind of an appeal to all countries to honor their obligation to their neighbors” to disclose nuclear accidents immediately, he said.

“What they want to do is to go beyond that, and find ways of strengthening the safety framework within which the nuclear industry operates internationally,” the Thatcher aide added.

Stress on Information

Nakasone stressed that “rather than criticizing the Soviet Union, it is important to obtain information (of the Chernobyl accident) for the sake of the future of mankind.”

Acting on behalf of all the summit participants, Nakasone ordered the so-called summit sherpas--the personal aides of each leader--to draft a statement urging that provisions of the current International Atomic Energy Agency agreement be strengthened and made obligatory. The agreement calls on its signers to notify other nations of nuclear accidents within 40 days, but it is not mandatory. He also told the aides that they should include a provision to make IAEA safety standards “more specific.”

Under Nakasone’s instructions, the statement also was to include a call for mutual assistance to cope with and limit damage from future nuclear accidents as well as for future international inspection of nuclear facilities.

European diplomats said there was lengthy debate among the leaders and their aides over the wording of the declaration on terrorism.

They were working on the basis of an initial, Japanese-inspired draft and a tougher British draft that Thatcher presented Sunday.

“There is a search for unity in saying something that matters,” a Thatcher aide said, “and not in saying something that doesn’t matter but sounds good.”

Japan initially objected to Reagan’s proposal to name Libya as the prime mover behind international terrorism, and several European countries were unenthusiastic about the idea, the European diplomats said. But by this afternoon, the tide had turned, Foreign Minister Abe indicated, and there was a growing consensus that Libya must be mentioned.

French Objections

As for listing specific actions that each country could take, another Reagan proposal, Mitterrand objected that the summit meeting had no business making specific policy decisions, his spokeswoman indicated.

“The summit is not a board of directors,” French spokeswoman Michelle Gendreau-Massaloux said. “It is not a matter of decisions. Each country makes it own decisions.”

But she added that Mitterrand is willing to support many of Thatcher’s suggestions for increased cooperation in counterterrorist efforts.

“France has demonstrated firm resolve to deal with international terrorism in an effective way,” she said.

In the past, the French have objected to most of the Reagan Administration’s proposals, such as an economic embargo against Libya, on the grounds that they would not be effective. Some French officials have suggested that their government would support action to overthrow Kadafi.

Times staff writers Doyle McManus and Sam Jameson, in Tokyo, contributed to this story.