White House Assails Soviet Claims on Summit

The White House lashed out Monday at continued claims from Moscow that President Reagan endorsed a Soviet proposal at the Reykjavik summit that would have eliminated all nuclear weapons in 10 years.

“It’s a propaganda tactic on their part,” said spokesman Larry Speakes, accusing the Soviets of trying to whip up “a side issue” to win points in Europe. Although Reagan may have discussed such a far-reaching proposal, Speakes said, it was never formally put on the negotiating table.

In the latest in a series of charges, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Monday accused U.S. officials of “gross misrepresentation” of what happened two weeks ago at his meeting in Iceland with Reagan.

At the same same, Gorbachev said there is still hope for progress on nuclear arms reduction despite “provocative actions” by the Reagan Administration since the Reykjavik summit--an apparent reference to the U.S. order expelling 55 Soviet diplomats from the United States.

Dispute on Strategic Arms

The Soviets claim that President Reagan agreed to reduce both superpowers’ arsenals of strategic nuclear weapons by half in five years and to abolish them in 10 years. The White House maintains that the U.S. delegation was willing only to discuss the elimination of ballistic missiles and that it crossed out the word “strategic” in the Soviet proposal put forth in Iceland and substituted the word “ballistic.”

Without that change, which would allow the United States to keep some cruise missiles and heavy bombers while eliminating intermediate-range and intercontinental missiles, the proposed agreement would have left Western Europe virtually defenseless against a massive buildup of conventional Soviet forces. U.S. allies within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization depend on nuclear weapons to deter the Soviets from launching an attack with their superior conventional weapons.

Seeks Movement at Geneva

Speakes accused the Soviets of deliberately misinterpreting Reagan’s position “because they read (ballistic) on the piece of paper that we exchanged, and that paper is still on the table with two views.” He said the United States and the Soviets are in “a battle for European opinion” and that the Soviets are trying to foster insecurity within NATO over the U.S. negotiating stance.

Speakes also urged Moscow to “get down to business” in continuing arms control negotiations at Geneva and nail down agreements to reduce intermediate-range missiles and end nuclear testing. These are the areas, Speakes said, in which Reagan and Gorbachev “came close to an agreement.”

- On Saturday, a Soviet Foreign Ministry official quoted from the Soviet record of Reykjavik to contend that Reagan had agreed at one point to abolish all nuclear weapons within 10 years. Since then, the official said, right-wing forces in the Administration have tried to pull back from such a commitment.

Release of Notes Sought

Last week, in a televised speech, Gorbachev made the same claim and said that Reagan had pulled back from his Reykjavik agreement because he could not control the “hawks” in his Administration who wanted to sabotage all arms control efforts.

On Monday, reporters pressed Speakes to release the White House notes taken during Reagan’s private session with Gorbachev to back up the Administration’s assertion that Reagan would not embrace an arrangement that banned all nuclear weapons in 10 years.

Speakes refused to make the notes public, citing diplomatic confidentiality as the Administration’s chief reason for keeping them private. “It’s just not done, and we don’t do it,” he said.

Speakes said that the elimination of all nuclear weapons has been Reagan’s “goal and dream for many years” but that the President would not agree to a timetable that would put “either side at a disadvantage during the period that you would go to reach this.”

The question of exactly what Reagan did or did not agree to in Reykjavik has dogged the Administration almost from the moment Reagan returned from Iceland.

Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), a respected authority on arms control issues, said he asked Reagan whether he meant to give up all strategic weapons as part of the deal in Iceland, and Reagan replied that he did. White House officials then said Nunn and other congressional leaders had “misunderstood” Reagan’s position and should have questioned him further.

In the weeks since the Reykjavik meeting, U.S. and Soviet officials have waged competing public-relations campaigns, with each side releasing an unprecedented amount of information designed to capitalize on the progress made and blame any breakdown on the other side.

Gorbachev’s latest remarks were made in response to a question posed at a writers’ conference in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia.

Gorbachev said he had proposed a 50% cut in strategic weapons, the elimination of all medium-range missiles in Europe, the strengthening of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and a nuclear test ban. He said he made these concessions in the hope that the Americans would reciprocate.

“If the American side had accepted this package, a real process of the elimination of nuclear weapons would have got under way,” he said in a statement made public by the official Soviet news agency Tass.

Eleanor Clift reported from Washington and William J. Eaton reported from Moscow.