Reagan and Gorbachev Agree on Arms Progress : Say They Will Stand by Proposals for Sweeping Cuts but Still Bar Compromise on ‘Star Wars’

Both President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, in remarkably similar comments, said Wednesday that their weekend summit moved the world closer to nuclear arms control, despite their continuing dispute over the U.S. space-based missile defense program.

With the recriminations that followed the failure to reach agreement in Reykjavik already beginning to fade, Reagan and Gorbachev each said he would stand by the sweeping weapons-cut proposals advanced during the summit.

However, both men continued to hold firm to their seemingly irreconcilable positions concerning development and testing of an American space-based missile defense system, the issue that produced the Iceland deadlock.

The President reiterated his determination to continue with the Strategic Defense Initiative program, which he said may some day “protect mankind from missile attack.” The Soviet leader, meanwhile, refused to yield on his demand for a package deal on arms control, which would impede the U.S. missile defense program, popularly known as “Star Wars.”

Nevertheless, Reagan said in a speech to high school students in Baltimore: “Let’s not look back and place blame. I repeat my offer to Mr. Gorbachev--our proposals are serious--they remain on the table. . . . We’re ready to pick up where we left off.”

Meets With Argentine

And Gorbachev, talking to visiting Argentine President Raul Alfonsin, said that the summit “showed that it is possible to approach agreement that would lay the beginning to the elimination of nuclear weapons.”

“Our platform of new proposals, which are inseparable from each other--and we do not remove any of them--provides the opportunity to invigorate the search for mutually acceptable decisions,” Gorbachev said, according to Tass, the official Soviet news agency.

By describing the Soviet package as inseparable, Gorbachev may have intended to give Reagan an ultimatum that progress would be impossible without U.S. concessions on missile defenses. But the rest of Gorbachev’s remarks, as reported by Tass, were conciliatory.

“The situation after the meeting did not deteriorate,” Gorbachev said. “It opens up new possibilities.”

In Geneva, meanwhile, U.S. and Soviet negotiators resumed their arms control talks. Max M. Kampelman, the U.S. chief delegate, said that his team will try to write a formal treaty based on the tentative agreements reached in Reykjavik.

“The work has to be done here in Geneva,” Kampelman told reporters. “We’ve got a very sharp pencil, we’ve got lots of paper and we are ready to work. Our purpose obviously is to proceed now beyond Reykjavik, which was a very important, significant, positive step.”

The next high-level U.S.-Soviet meeting is expected early next month when Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze are both scheduled to attend a 35-nation meeting in Vienna to review progress on reducing tensions in Europe made since the signing of the 1975 Helsinki accords.

Shultz, who plans to leave Nov. 5 for the Austrian capital, said he expects to meet Shevardnadze there.

Reagan, in a brief exchange with reporters after his Baltimore speech, was asked if he expected to meet Gorbachev at another summit.

“I have to believe we will, yes,” the President replied.

When, he was asked.

“Ask him,” Reagan responded.

At their first summit last year in Geneva, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed in principle that Gorbachev would visit the United States this year. That schedule now seems unlikely, but U.S. officials say the invitation remains open.

‘It Shows Them Up’

Immediately after the Reykjavik meeting ended, White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan snapped: “There will not be another summit in the near future that I can see at this time. The Soviets are the ones that refused to make a deal. It shows them up for what they are.”

Since returning to Washington, however, Regan and other U.S. officials have mellowed considerably. Regan attributed his earlier comments to tension and a lack of sleep.

In Moscow, the Politburo published a report calling for “continuing contacts and talks” between Moscow and Washington.

Although the Politburo statement said that the Iceland talks failed to produce an agreement only because of “the American Administration’s stubborn unwillingness” to accept new limits on its anti-missile program, the Kremlin leadership said, “It would be a fatal step to pass up a historic chance for a drastic solution of problems of war and peace.”

Despite Gorbachev’s description of the Soviet package as inseparable, Moscow’s chief arms negotiator, Viktor P. Karpov, suggested in London that the Soviets may eventually agree to a separate deal on intermediate-range nuclear forces.

Karpov said at a press conference Tuesday that Moscow is ready to negotiate removal of the missiles in Europe without involving the space-defense system.