No Guarantee on Summit for 1986, Soviet Expert Says

Arms control talks between the Soviet Union and the United States have deteriorated and there is no guarantee a second summit between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev will be held this year, a leading Soviet expert on East-West relations said Wednesday.

Georgy A. Arbatov, director of the Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, said the Soviets are demanding that a second summit produce a concrete arms control agreement and the Reagan Administration’s attitude indicates that this is not likely.

“In the main issue of arms control, Soviet-American relations have deteriorated since the Geneva summit,” Arbatov said, referring to the the first Reagan-Gorbachev meeting last November.

SALT Threat Cited

He said the U.S. threat to abandon the second strategic arms limitation treaty and demand the Soviets decrease the size of their U. N. delegation by the end of the year all cloud the proper political climate for a summit.

President Reagan has said he will abandon the limits on nuclear warhead delivery vehicles set down in the unratified SALT treaty in December by deploying cruise missiles on long-range American bomber aircraft.

Arbatov said the current contacts between Soviet and U.S. officials in such fields as arms control, regional issues and science should be seen as a preparation not for a summit but for a meeting in September between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

“You ask now, ‘Will there be a second summit meeting?’ It is too early to say,” said Arbatov.

The Shultz-Shevardnadze meeting scheduled for Sept. 19-20 in the United States is considered the key preliminary session before the summit.

President Challenged

Gorbachev, in a speech Aug. 18 extending the Soviet Union’s unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing, challenged President Reagan to agree to a nuclear test ban at the summit.

The newspaper Literary Gazette echoed Arbatov’s remarks in an editorial saying the spirit of the Geneva, 1985, summit was lost.

“Looking back it can be said that Geneva contributed to lowering the level of confrontation between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R.,” the newspaper said. “Yet another thing shall be admitted too, that there is no progress on any major issues.”