Kremlin Rejects Reagan Proposal : Soviets, Optimistic on Summit, Ridicule ‘Star Wars’ Offer at U.N.

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze on Tuesday categorically rejected President Reagan’s offer to wait seven years before deploying a space-based missile defense system, but another Soviet official said the chances of a superpower summit meeting this year are improving “day by day.”

On a day when Shevardnadze addressed the U.N. General Assembly, he also met twice with Secretary of State George P. Shultz.

The two men conferred for about 40 minutes before the Soviet foreign minister’s speech and met for about an hour and a half Tuesday night, State Department spokesman Bernard Kalb announced.

After the first meeting, Kalb said Shultz and Shevardnadze failed to resolve the matter of American journalist Nicholas Daniloff. Kalb refused even to reveal the subject of the evening meeting.

Ridicules Proposal

Shultz has said it is inconceivable that a “fruitful” summit meeting between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev could be held as long as the Soviets are charging Daniloff, the Moscow correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, with espionage.

In his U.N. speech, Shevardnadze ridiculed and dismissed out of hand Reagan’s proposal, which he first made public Monday in a speech to the same audience, to delay deployment of the “Star Wars” missile defense system for at least seven years in exchange for deep cuts in offensive nuclear forces.

Responding directly to Reagan’s expressed hope that advances in strategic defenses would ultimately make nuclear arsenals obsolete, Shevardnadze said: “Evil designs are being passed for good intentions, and a sword for a shield.

“The intention is to get the (1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile) treaty out of the way within seven years,” he said. “Everything is carefully calculated here, for it is precisely in seven years that they plan to prepare space weapons for deployment.

Sharing of Technology

“Whatever is done to conceal it, the so-called defensive space shield is being developed for a first strike,” he said.

Reagan has proposed a new anti-ballistic missile treaty that would prevent deployment of any missile defense system until 1991, although research, testing and development could proceed. After that, either side wishing to deploy would be required over a two-year period to negotiate a possible sharing of the technology with the other. Only then could either side unilaterally deploy, with six months’ notice.

Shevardnadze peppered his speech with anti-American barbs but did not stress them.

And the tone of the top Kremlin diplomat’s speech was often conciliatory. As President Reagan had done the day before, Shevardnadze spoke of increasing hopes that the United States and the Soviet Union can make progress in their arms control negotiations to clear the way for a Reagan-Gorbachev summit meeting by the end of this year. A superpower summit remains a “realistic possibility,” the Soviet foreign minister said.

Shevardnadze also agreed with Reagan that the two nations are nearing an accord on limitation of intermediate-range nuclear forces in Europe.

“Lately, encouraging outlines of meaningful agreements have been emerging,” Shevardnadze said. “We could move forward rather smoothly, if that is what the U.S. side wants.”

But he made it clear that Moscow has no interest in Reagan’s plan for restricting the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as “Star Wars.” That proposal forms the core of the arms control package which Reagan outlined to Gorbachev in a letter July 15. Gorbachev replied to the Reagan letter Friday, but the contents of the Soviet response have not been made public.

Quota Suggested

In a related matter, Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov said the United States has suggested an annual quota of nuclear tests to reduce the total number but would permit some testing to continue. The Administration has not made public such a proposal, but the Soviet spokesman implied it was contained in Reagan’s letter to Gorbachev.

“You can’t be a little pregnant,” Gerasimov said scornfully. “If you are testing, you are testing. . . . Let’s stop testing altogether.”

However, when Gerasimov was asked if optimism about summit prospects this year is growing, he replied, “Yes, day by day.”

Chief Source of Friction

Although Shevardnadze’s speech was, in effect, an annual report on East-West relations as viewed from Moscow, the foreign minister did not refer to the Daniloff case, the chief source of Washington-Moscow friction.

However, Daniloff was the chief topic of conversation when Shultz and Shevardnadze met Tuesday morning in the office of the president of the U.N. Security Council.

Gerasimov, when asked what transpired at the meeting, deadpanned, “Was there a meeting?”

Told that the session had been confirmed both by Shevardnadze and by the U.S. government, he said, “I don’t see any big problems in solving this case, but I don’t want to rock the boat.” On the U.S. expulsion of 25 Soviet diplomats at the United Nations, Gerasimov said, “This obstacle must be resolved.”

Neither Kalb nor Gerasimov would say whether new proposals were advanced by either side.

Kalb said no additional meetings are planned, but he noted that the Tuesday sessions had not been planned as late as Monday. A Soviet official said the two men might meet again before they leave New York sometime next week.

Shultz and Shevardnadze also met for 14 hours last Friday and Saturday in Washington.

In his U.N. speech, Shevardnadze reiterated the now-familiar Soviet call for a moratorium on nuclear testing. He scoffed at Reagan’s offer to ratify two decade-old nuclear test limitation treaties as a first step to an eventual comprehensive test ban, provided verification could be assured.

Shevardnadze said Reagan’s emphasis on verification was “a worn-out curtain.”

“The Soviet Union is open to any form or method of verification,” he said without elaborating.

Shevardnadze even cited last April’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster to support his argument.

“For us, that accident has meant more than grief over our losses and compassion for its victims,” he said. “It has heightened our concern for the future of the Earth. Chernobyl was a tragic error of man working with peaceful atoms. . . . With 50,000 nuclear weapons existing in the world, we are all living on borrowed time, and nobody knows when that time will run out.”