THE REYKJAVIK SUMMIT : Speakes Complaint : U.S. Accuses Soviets on Blackout

The White House Sunday accused a Soviet official of having broken the news embargo imposed on the summit here and said the United States would not be bound by the blackout during the rest of the day’s meetings.

The accusation by White House spokesman Larry Speakes immediatedly triggered charges from American journalists that Speakes himself had broken the blackout terms Saturday night by secretly briefing two news organizations.

Speakes, appearing at an early afternoon briefing for the White House press corps, did not deny the charges. Instead, he said he had been available to speak with any reporters who wanted to contact him.

Marked Change

This was a marked change from Speakes’ public rebuke Saturday of Adm. John M. Poindexter, White House national security adviser, for having used the word “businesslike” to a reporter to characterize the opening session of the two-day summit.

Speakes said such a characterization was inappropriate under the terms of the blackout.

He reacted angrily when a reporter reminded him of a pledge given in Washington that he would not conduct private briefings during the blackout.

Two Minutes to Talk

He barked out an order for the reporter to meet him in his office, then told a group that showed up there that he would give them only two minutes to discuss the matter.

White House correspondents said they were reacting to accounts in Sunday’s editions of the Washington Post and the New York Times indicating that U.S. officials believed progress was made in the initial meetings here between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. There were similar accounts on network television broadcasts.

The controversy in the crowded press room, set up in a Reykjavik hotel, overshadowed Speakes’ original denunciation of Soviet official Evgeny P. Velikhov, who was quoted by a news agency Sunday as having said that Reagan and Gorbachev were close to agreement on significant nuclear-arms reductions.

Speakes raised the possibility that the Soviet official made the comment in hopes of exerting pressure on the United States to come to agreement.