2 Expert Groups Named at Summit : Reagan, Gorbachev Order Panels to Confer on Arms, Other Divisive Issues

President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev met face to face Saturday for the first time in nearly a year and appointed two panels of experts to undertake a close overnight examination of arms control proposals and other key issues dividing the two superpowers.

The two working groups, each consisting of six American officials and six Soviets, are to report to the two leaders before they conclude their two-day summit here today.

White House spokesman Larry Speakes told reporters he could not predict whether the aides’ meetings would take “a few hours, or an all-nighter.”

‘Things Were Good Today’

Although both the White House and the Soviet side imposed a news blackout on the substance of the first day of summit meetings and generally refused to characterize Saturday’s two sessions, Gennady I. Gerasimov, a Soviet spokesman, told a press briefing, “Things were good today.”

Shultz Press Conference

After the summit ends today and the news blackout is lifted, Secretary of State George P. Shultz will have a press conference here on the proceedings. Soviet officials, speaking on condition that they not be identified, said Gorbachev will have a press conference at midday.

Reagan is to address American military personnel and their families at a North Atlantic Treaty Organization base near here to discuss his meeting with the Soviet leader before leaving for home this afternoon. He also will make a televised address to the nation at 5 p.m. PDT Monday. Speakes said the President has not decided whether to speak from the White House or to request congressional approval to address a joint session of Congress.

Reagan named Ambassador Paul H. Nitze, his special assistant for arms control, to head the working group on arms control, and Rozanne L. Ridgway, assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs, to chair the second group on humanitarian, regional and bilateral issues.

Their Soviet counterparts are Viktor P. Karpov, chief Soviet delegate to the Geneva arms talks, and Alexander A. Bessmertnykh, an American expert who is first deputy foreign minister.

2 Separate Meetings

The two working groups began their working session Saturday night in Hofdi House, a two-story white clapboard structure on the edge of wind-swept Reykjavik harbor where, earlier in the day, Reagan and Gorbachev held two separate meetings for a total of three hours and 57 minutes.

Speakes said the idea for the working groups grew out of the leaders’ two sessions together, but the decision to appoint them was not made until the end of the second meeting late Saturday afternoon. Speakes declined to say who suggested the idea.

A similar convening of advisers during the summit last November in Geneva--the first meeting between Gorbachev and Reagan--resulted in the two sides jointly announcing an agreement to expedite talks on reducing intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe, the one arms control area that now appears to be nearing resolution.

On human rights issues, the United States has been pressuring the Soviets to liberalize Jewish emigration and to grant religious freedom. There has been continued speculation that the Soviets might announce a general release of dissidents or agree to an increase in emigration after the Reykjavik meeting.

Icelandic sharpshooters kept watch from the tops of nearby buildings, and about 600 security men, from the Soviet Union and the United States as well as the host government, ringed the house. Huge canvas screens were erected around it to prevent anyone from monitoring the conversations inside.

Reagan Got His Way

Before the summit, Gorbachev had talked of focusing largely on arms control issues in his meetings with Reagan. But the President insisted that human rights and other issues would have a prominent place on the agenda, and the appointment of the second working group indicates he has had his way.

Reagan and Gorbachev, who hold their third and final session today, met on the first floor of the Hofdi House, in a room facing the harbor and snow-capped mountains partly shrouded by clouds. The mansion was built in 1909 and once served as the British ambassador’s residence, but eventually was sold because creaking noises and building movements convinced some people it was haunted.

For those who do not believe in ghosts, the White House briefing book suggests the noises and movements are caused by the building site--an area of thermally heated underground water, which causes the porous lava under the house to expand and contract slightly.

Neither side indicated whether, once inside the house, the two leaders engaged in any noisy or heated exchanges, as they apparently did on one or two occasions during their first summit in Geneva last November.

Outside the house, as they posed for photographers before each session, the leaders greeted each other warmly, smiled while exchanging small talk, and generally appeared to be in an upbeat mood.

Reagan Arrived First

Reagan, who hosted the first meeting, arrived in his motorcade a few minutes before the scheduled 10:30 a.m. opening for the first meeting. The sky was dark and chilly winds were blowing, but the President, clad in a brown suit, wore no hat or topcoat. He went immediately into the house.

Gorbachev himself arrived a minute or two early, wearing a trench coat and carrying his hat. Reagan, concerned that he had not been out front to greet the Soviet leader, rushed outside to shake hands as Gorbachev, smiling, pointed to his wristwatch.

Inside the house, before their meeting got under way, a small pool of reporters heard Reagan’s translator tell him that Gorbachev had just informed him that “the Icelanders that we met yesterday tried to persuade me very convincingly that we must agree on something with you, Mr. President. And I asked them, ‘Had they said the same words to the President when you met him?’ And they assured me, ‘Yes--in exactly the same words.’ ”

In answer to questions shouted by reporters, Reagan said he would not predict whether a date for a formal summit to be held later in Washington will be determined at the meeting here, which the Soviets have been referring to as an “interim summit.” When asked whether he was optimistic, Reagan said, “I’m always optimistic.”

Gorbachev told reporters he had nothing to add about setting a date for a Washington summit, but said, “I can see the main essence and the meaning of this meeting is that what we achieve here should help our next meeting.”

Met One-to-One

At their morning session, the two leaders met one-on-one, accompanied only by translators and note takers. In the afternoon, after the leaders talked for 51 minutes, they invited Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze to join them.

Speakes has insisted the news blackout means officials should not even characterize the tone of the Reagan-Gorbachev meetings. But, at one point during the day, reporters encountered Adm. John M. Poindexter, the President’s national security adviser, and when they asked how the meeting had gone, he replied, “businesslike.”

Asked at a press briefing whether he would characterize the summit sessions in view of Poindexter’s comment, Speakes criticized the adviser by saying, “I will not do that, and Poindexter should not have.”

Speakes did say that the two leaders had not discussed setting a date for a Washington summit. At the Geneva summit, Gorbachev agreed that he would meet Reagan in Washington in 1986 and the President agreed to another summit in Moscow in 1987.

Before the Reykjavik meeting, American officials indicated they expected the two leaders to agree on a date while meeting here. However, since arriving here, Ridgway and other American officials had played down the importance of setting a date.

Not Negotiating for Date

“We didn’t come expecting a date,” Ridgway told a news briefing. “We aren’t going to be negotiating for a date. If somebody wants to give us a date, fine.”

She and other U.S. officials also had cautioned against expecting any kind of written statement to be issued by the two leaders at the close of their meetings.

The makeup of the U.S. arms control working group was essentially the same as the group of experts who met earlier in Moscow and Washington to explore possible areas where progress could be made at a summit. The members are: Ambassador Max M. Kampelman, chief negotiator for the Geneva arms control talks; Ambassador Edward L. Rowny, special adviser to the President; Kenneth L. Adelman, director of Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; Richard N. Perle, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, and Robert E. Linhard, a National Security Council aide.

Appointed to the working group on other humanitarian, regional and bilateral issues were Arthur A. Hartman, the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union; Thomas W. Simons Jr., deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs; Mark Paris, director of Soviet affairs of the State Department, and Peter W. Rodman and Jack Matlock Jr., both of the National Security Council staff.