Reagan Tells Orlov He’ll Press Rights at Summit

President Reagan met today with freed Soviet dissident Yuri Orlov, and told him that he would press the Soviet Union for improvements on human rights issues as well as progress on arms control.

“Unless there is real Soviet movement on human rights, we’ll not have the kind of political atmosphere necessary to make lasting progress on other issues,” Reagan told Orlov and a group of human rights activists during a White House meeting.

Orlov, along with his wife, Irina L. Valitova, met with the President in a private Oval Office session prior to the Cabinet Room meeting.

Asked whether Orlov had told him to carry a message to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Reagan said the freed dissident had asked him “to carry on the work he had carried on” in the Soviet Union, to “strive for freedom.”

At a news conference earlier in the day in New York, Orlov today warned that unless the United States presses human rights issues at the impending summit, issues of security cannot be permanently resolved.

Unless the Soviet people are allowed to travel in the West and communicate with Americans, there will never be the trust necessary to ensure peace, Orlov said at the news conference. Disarmament alone will not do that, he said.

Orlov, who along with his wife arrived in the United States from Moscow on Sunday, said he was impressed by the friendliness and openness of the Americans he had met so far.

“It is almost like in my hometown. I like that a lot,” he said.