Both Sides Look to Reykjavik for Arms Progress

Both Soviet and U.S. officials warned Wednesday against unrealistic hopes for the hastily arranged meeting in Iceland next week of President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev but indicated that the session might produce a breakthrough toward an agreement to limit intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe.

White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, appearing on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning, America,” said the Oct. 11-12 meeting in Reykjavik “could lead to a better understanding and, perhaps, some give here and there in order to reach an agreement so we get some arms reductions.”

Saying it is unlikely that any agreement would actually be signed by Reagan and Gorbachev in Iceland, Regan added: “I am not trying to hype this meeting to that extent.”

Providing Momentum

His view was echoed by Soviet spokesmen here and in the United States. Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov, interviewed on NBC-TV’s “Today” show, predicted “some kind of breakthrough” in Reykjavik but said it would probably be limited to new instructions to lower-level weapons specialists that would provide the momentum for a new agreement.

“It’s quite possible that we can have movement” on arms control, the Soviet official said. “We want . . . our leaders to put their heads together and to think big and to find some kind of direction to solve our problems . . . some marching orders for the bureaucrats to move quicker.”

In Moscow, another Foreign Ministry spokesman, Boris Pyadyshev, told a news briefing that agreement seems most promising on the subject of mutual reduction of intermediate-range missiles in Europe. He said the Soviet Union will not insist, as it has in the past, on including French and British strategic missiles in the bargaining if it can be agreed to remove all U.S. and Soviet missiles from the continent.

In continuing arms control talks in Geneva, both sides have indicated their willingness to reduce their intermediate-range missiles to 100 warheads apiece. But differences remain, particularly because the United States wants the same 100-warhead limit on Soviet weapons in Asia, which China regards as a threat, while retaining an equal number of intermediate-range weapons in the continental United States. Moscow has offered only to freeze its Asian arsenal at the present level of 513 warheads.

The United States currently has 108 Pershing 2 missiles in Western Europe and 128 cruise missiles, all with single warheads. The Soviets are believed to have about 270 triple-warhead SS-20 missiles within range of Western Europe.

The main objective at the second Reagan-Gorbachev meeting, Pyadyshev said, will be to agree on instructions to arms control negotiators to push them toward an agreement that can be signed at a full-fledged summit in the United States.

Pyadyshev predicted that the Iceland meeting--dubbed an “interim summit” by the Soviet media--will lead to a formal summit, with the two leaders deciding in Iceland on the timing. (In Washington, the Associated Press quoted an unidentified Administration official who also said that Gorbachev and Reagan would settle the date for their long-delayed summit).

Meanwhile, Secretary of State George P. Shultz said Reagan has accepted the Soviet leader’s proposal for an informal, pre-summit session because “the name of the game here is to solve problems.”

Shultz, appearing on the “Today” show, noted that a range of issues--including arms control, human rights and regional conflicts--will be discussed by the two leaders. “We are in a position, I hope, to make some progress on these problems that I think all of us would like to see resolved.”

Shultz disputed suggestions that Reagan would not have time in the next 10 days to prepare for the hastily called meeting.

“We have been working with great intensity, particularly over the past two or three months, on all of the issues involved,” he said. “Now we hadn’t explicitly thought about a meeting between the two heads in preparation for the U.S. summit meeting, but . . . as the President thought about it and as we talked about it, we thought, ‘Well, this could be a good idea, maybe we can accomplish something.’ ”

(The AP reported that Reagan and Gorbachev are likely to agree to broader cultural exchanges and to expand consular offices in the two countries. The news service, quoting an Administration official, said Reagan would also press Gorbachev to allow more Soviets Jews to emigrate to Israel, an exodus that has slowed to a trickle.).

Officials have already said that Reagan and Gorbachev will discuss the U.S. order to expel 25 members of the Soviet Mission to the United Nations. The expulsion order, issued last month by the State Department, was supposed to have taken effect Wednesday, but Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze agreed to extend the deadline for the officials’ departure until Oct. 15.

Finishing Their Tours

U.S. sources have told The Times that seven Soviet mission employes still in the United States, including the KGB station chief, Valery Ivanovich Savchenko, and the GRU military intelligence station chief, Vladislav Borisovich Skvortsov, will be allowed to remain in the United States until they finish their tours of duty. Savchenko is listed as a counselor in political affairs at the Soviet Mission and Skvortsov as a senior counsel.

At the Moscow briefing, Pyadyshev disclosed that Gorbachev had proposed that he and Reagan meet either in London or Reykjavik, a city of about 85,000 that has never been the site of such an international conference. It was Reagan, he said, who decided on Iceland, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

An Icelandic diplomat here said that the country’s prime minister, Steingrimur Hermannson, learned Monday from the Soviet ambassador of Gorbachev’s proposal for a meeting in Reykjavik. Then the U.S. ambassador said the United States agreed with the proposal. With Iceland officials sworn to secrecy, the meeting was announced Tuesday by Reagan in Washington and by Tass, the official Soviet news agency, in Moscow.

Provides 75% of Oil

The Soviet Union maintains good relations with Iceland. The Soviets provide at least 75% of Iceland’s oil and take a large share of Iceland’s fish exports.

“We see the Reykjavik meeting as a working meeting, without much noise, and with limited participation,” Pyadyshev said. “It should give encouragement to progress in all directions, on all aspects of nuclear weapons.”

“We are not expecting too much of it, but we are not underestimating its significance,” Pyadyshev said.

Pyadyshev said the Soviet Union has “grave concern” over the lack of progress on arms control talks in Geneva despite some positive developments in other areas.