Shultz Criticizes Soviets Over Summit Planning Delays

Secretary of State George P. Shultz expressed growing irritation Saturday at the refusal of the Soviet Union to set a date for preliminary meetings to plan the next summit meeting between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Talking to reporters aboard his plane on a flight from Manila to Palau, Shultz suggested that Moscow is failing to keep up its end of the agreement that Reagan and Gorbachev reached last year in Geneva to maintain contacts at all levels.

“We think there is a lot to be gained from (a high-level meeting), but it takes two to have a meeting,” he said. “We are prepared to have one, but at this point they don’t seem to be.”

Shultz wants to meet as soon as possible with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze to begin planning for a Reagan-Gorbachev meeting. The next summit is to be held in the United States, but no date has been set.

Agreed on Dialogue

Shultz said that Reagan and Gorbachev agreed at Geneva that “we ought to have a dialogue between our countries at various levels right up to the top. What has happened is that meetings below the foreign minister level have been going forward, but they (the Soviets) haven’t wanted to go forward with the others.”

Moscow’s reluctance to set a date for the Shultz-Shevardnadze meeting probably means that the two men will not meet until September, when the Soviet foreign minister is expected to attend the opening sessions of the U.N. General Assembly in New York. Shultz had hoped to meet sooner than that, possibly in July.

Shultz made his comments as he was flying home from a 10-day tour of Asia. On the outbound leg, he had been far more optimistic about the prospects of an early meeting with Shevardnadze.

Although protocol would dictate that the meeting take place in Washington, Shultz said he is prepared to meet the Soviet foreign minister in Europe, something that he said Moscow had signaled that it would prefer.

Some U.S. officials had hoped that Soviet Ambassador Yuri V. Dubinin would propose a firm date when he returned to Washington from consultations in Moscow last week. But he did not.

High-level contacts are scheduled for next month between the Soviets and a number of Western European leaders, possibly indicating a Soviet strategy of bypassing Washington while trying to improve relations with Western Europe.

“I don’t have any way of saying what their motives are, but they have historically tried to divide the United States from our allies and they have historically been unable to do so,” Shultz said. “They won’t be successful this time if that is their motive.”