U.S. to Renew Key Summit Proposals in Geneva Talks : Seeks 1996 Missile Ban for Europe

President Reagan has approved a package of proposals for sharp reductions in U.S. and Soviet strategic nuclear weapons and the withdrawal of intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe, Administration officials said today.

The package puts on the negotiating table in Geneva the key proposals Reagan made to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev at their summit in Iceland earlier this month. It includes a ban on all U.S. and Soviet ballistic missiles by 1996, said the officials, who were willing to discuss the subject only on the condition they not be named publicly.

So far, Soviet negotiators have resisted taking up seriously the proposals Reagan discussed with Gorbachev on Oct. 11-12, said Kenneth L. Adelman, director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

“It seems they have been under instructions to be unhelpful since the Reykjavik meeting,” Adelman said in an interview. “We want to build on Reykjavik. They want to dispute.”

Underground Tests

Adelman said separate talks will be held with the Soviets next week in Geneva on improving the verification of underground nuclear tests. Reagan told Gorbachev that better monitoring procedures could lead to a treaty outlawing all blasts.

A more modest U.S. arms control package was sent to chief U.S. negotiator Max Kampelman last week. Several key items were held back, including the proposed ban on U.S. and Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe.

The U.S. military chiefs wanted to consider first the impact that a missile ban would have on defending Western Europe from Soviet attack. NATO ground forces are outnumbered by Warsaw Pact troops.

The discussion was held at the White House on Monday with Reagan presiding. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. William J. Crowe, participated and endorsed the package, the sources said.

The new instructions were transmitted to Kampelman Monday night.

‘Fully on Board’

White House spokesman Larry Speakes, accompanying Reagan on a political campaign trip to the South today, confirmed the meeting.

He told reporters the importance of the White House meeting is that “everyone in the (arms control) community now is fully on board on what we lay on the table. It’s what we had on the table in Iceland.”

Reagan’s call for a ban on ballistic missiles by 1996 carries out the position U.S. officials said he took in talking with Gorbachev. The Soviets contend, however, that Reagan went further and supported a ban on all strategic nuclear forces.

A U.S. official, who said records of the conversations between Reagan and Gorbachev were still incomplete, acknowledged that Reagan “may have said that at one point.” (Earlier denial, Page 6.)

But he and another U.S. official stressed that the President informed Gorbachev on several occasions during their talks that he sought a ban only on ballistic missiles.

Speakes said today that elimination of ballistic missiles is the 10-year goal. Elimination of all nuclear weapons, he said, is “the ultimate goal.”