Reagan Sees Gains for Geneva Talks : But Reaffirms ‘Star Wars’ Stand; Gorbachev Decries U.S. ‘Scheme’

President Reagan, leading an Administration effort to put the best face on the breakdown of the weekend summit in Reykjavik, contended Tuesday that “historic gains” achieved in Iceland will form a sound basis for arms control negotiations in Geneva.

At the same time, however, Reagan reiterated his determination to stand firm on developing and testing his “Star Wars” program of space-based missile defense--the issue over which the Reykjavik summit broke up. “They (the Soviets) may think they can come back and talk me out of it, but they can’t,” he said.

And the Soviets appear just as determined to continue insisting that the United States confine all work on “Star Wars” to laboratory research. Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, in a televised address to the nation Tuesday, said he could not let the United States proceed with its Strategic Defense Initiative, as “Star Wars” is formally known.

‘Symbol of Obstruction’

“After Reykjavik, it is clearer than ever for everyone that SDI is the symbol of obstruction to the cause of peace, the epitome of military schemes, of the unwillingness to remove the nuclear menace looming over mankind,” Gorbachev said. “There can be no other interpretation.”

During an hourlong session at the White House on Tuesday with a group of Washington journalists, Reagan, Secretary of State George P. Shultz and White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan spoke glowingly of “progress” at Reykjavik. The session was part of a media blitz launched by the White House to portray the summit as a success despite its collapse at the end and early expressions of “deep disappointment” by Administration officials.

Shultz, who gave reporters a grim assessment of the outcome at Reykjavik immediately after the summit ended Sunday, said he was tired then and did not fully recognize that the meeting represented a “watershed” in arms negotiations.

“We labored hard and long over a very exhausting day, and we didn’t quite get all of the things that we wanted, and so you’re always a little down as a result of that,” he explained.

On Agenda for Future

Despite the impasse over “Star Wars,” U.S. officials contended Tuesday that the preliminary agreements on arms reductions, including the eventual elimination of most or all offensive nuclear weapons, will be on the agenda for future arms negotiations.

Reagan, accentuating the positive, said that the notes of the talks between himself and Gorbachev at Reykjavik have already been taken by U.S. negotiators to Geneva, where arms talks with the Soviets are continuing. He added that he is convinced the Soviets “will return to the table and talk.”

As the Soviets review those records and “see that there was only one major point of disagreement,” the President said, “I’m going to continue to be optimistic.” A few years ago, he said, he was told that radical arms reduction was “an impossible dream,” but now “it’s on the agenda for both sides.”

“For the first time on the highest level,” he said, “we and the Soviets came close to an agreement on real reductions of both strategic and intermediate-range weapons. For the first time we got Soviet agreement to a worldwide figure of 100 intermediate-range warheads for each side--a drastic cut. For the first time we began to hammer out details of a 50% cut in strategic forces over five years.

‘Historic Agreement’

“We were just a sentence or two away from agreeing to new talks on nuclear testing. And maybe most important, we were in sight of an historic agreement on completely eliminating the threat of offensive ballistic missiles by 1996.”

But when arms talks resume in Geneva, the superpowers will have to resolve their leaders’ seemingly intractable differences over “Star Wars” before an arms reduction agreement would be possible.

Reagan, asked if he considered taking Gorbachev’s “Star Wars” proposal under consideration instead of rejecting it outright, said: “There wasn’t any need of that. There wasn’t any way that I was going to back away from SDI.”

Also, in the aftermath of Reykjavik, there appears to be little chance of another summit in the near future, despite the fact that Reagan said his invitation for Gorbachev to come to Washington this year still stands. Chief of Staff Regan and Shultz said they do not expect another meeting between the two leaders anytime soon.

The President had gone to Reykjavik thinking that it would be largely a planning session for a full-scale summit later in Washington. During their Reykjavik discussions, Reagan said, Gorbachev “brought up the matter of summit and referred to it several times as if he was expecting to be here for the summit.”

‘I Think We Should Wait’

The only time Reagan mentioned the summit, he said, was when he asked, “Would you like to propose a date--suggest a date for that forthcoming summit?” But Gorbachev, according to Reagan, replied: “Until our people have all worked things out and we know about how long it’s going to take to make the plans for the summit, why, I think we should wait on naming a date.”

Despite the clash over SDI, the President said that he and the Soviet leader generally found a lot of common ground and that Gorbachev “was more open than” he had been at the first summit in Geneva last November.

Gorbachev is not “an easy mark in any way,” Reagan said. “He’s totally dedicated to their system and frankly . . . I think he believes sincerely their propaganda about us--that we’re beholden to industrial and military complexes and so forth.”

Reagan indicated that he still believes he can “do business” with Gorbachev. But since the summit, the two leaders have not communicated.