Pre-Summit Talks Approved : Shultz, Shevardnadze to Meet Sept. 19-20

The United States and the Soviet Union ended months of hesitation and maneuvering Monday with an announcement that Secretary of State George P. Shultz will meet Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze in September to begin planning the next superpower summit.

The announcement, made simultaneously in Washington and Moscow, said that Shultz and Shevardnadze will confer in Washington on Sept. 19-20, their first talks since last year’s Geneva meeting between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

The United States had sought a meeting of the foreign ministers since last spring. However, the Soviets had been reluctant to set a date, insisting on some indication of progress toward an arms control agreement before formal planning begins for the next Reagan-Gorbachev summit. The two leaders agreed last year that the summit would be in the United States.

Shultz and Shevardnadze had been scheduled to meet in May, but Moscow canceled the meeting after the April 15 U.S. bombing raid on Libya.

State Department spokesman Charles Redman said that Shultz and Shevardnadze will “review progress” since the last Reagan-Gorbachev meeting and “discuss what additional preparations may be needed for a summit later this year.” He said no date has been set for the next Reagan-Gorbachev meeting.

Tass, the Soviet news agency, did not mention summit planning in its one-sentence announcement of the Shultz-Shevardnadze meeting, indicating that Moscow remains less enthusiastic than Washington about bringing Reagan and Gorbachev together. The Tass dispatch gave no reason for the meeting.

Reagan outlined his arms control philosophy in a letter to Gorbachev last month, the contents of which have not been made public officially. Administration officials have indicated that Reagan said the United States is determined to go ahead with research and testing of a space-based anti-missile defense system--known formally as the Strategic Defense Initiative and popularly as “Star Wars.”

But the officials said Reagan indicated that he would not begin to deploy such anti-missile weapons for at least seven years and offered to share the benefits of “Star Wars” research with the Soviets. Moscow has said that its highest priority in the current round of arms control talks is an agreement to block testing and deployment of the U.S. missile defense program.

Met 5 Times Last Year

Last year, Shultz and Shevardnadze met five times between the foreign minister’s appointment in July and the November summit, carefully considering the issues that Reagan and Gorbachev were to discuss.

Presumably, if Shultz and Shevardnadze make progress in the September talks, they will meet again soon after, probably in Moscow, to fashion a summit agenda. A late November or early December date is considered most likely for the next Reagan-Gorbachev meeting.

The United States wants the summit agenda to be built around four broad topics: arms control, regional conflicts, bilateral relations and human rights.