Reagan Talked of Total A-Ban, U.S. Concedes

In the final hours of heated negotiations at Reykjavik, President Reagan went significantly beyond the carefully prepared arms control proposals he had brought to the Iceland summit--and the Administration has been struggling with the consequences ever since.

Now, belatedly, the White House has said that it has no quarrel with the Soviet version of events--that Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev did discuss the total elimination of nuclear weapons at the summit.

This followed nearly two weeks of confusion about the position that Reagan took at the summit. Immediately after the Reagan-Gorbachev meetings, White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, Secretary of State George P. Shultz and some other U.S. officials acknowledged that Reagan, in discussing the Soviets’ 10-year plan for arms cuts, embraced the idea of completely eliminating all atomic weapons--intercontinental missiles but also shorter-range missiles and bombers armed with nuclear weapons.

But other senior Administration officials then sought to discount this version--which seemed to raise questions about the President’s sure-footedness at the summit as well as about White House credibility afterward. They suggested that Reagan had discussed only the elimination of ballistic missiles.

Their apparent motive was to head off criticism that Reagan, by discussing elimination of all nuclear weapons, could have, among other things, left the United States and its allies vulnerable to the Soviets’ superior conventional forces.

The ensuing confusion about what the President had said prompted the Soviets, in repeated statements, to insist that Reagan indeed had discussed the idea of complete elimination of nuclear weapons. The White House then was placed in the embarrassing position of confirming the Soviet version of what the President had said.

The Administration’s prepared position would have retained cruise missiles and bombers while possibly reducing or eliminating strategic missiles and intermediate-range missiles in Europe.

Complete elimination of all nuclear weapons would “change the world as we’ve known it since World War II,” as one arms control expert put it, and unsettle the long-established system of deterrence.

The spectacle of a President discussing such a radical change without full backing from his staff has stirred widespread concern, inside and outside the Administration.

And the White House, in an effort to avoid the impression that Reagan blundered onto dangerous ground in Iceland, has sought to brush the question aside and attack Moscow for raising it.

For Gorbachev, the post-Iceland period has brought an immediate propaganda opportunity--a chance to attack Washington’s credibility before its allies and the world at large. But the opportunity has carried with it the possibility of damaging longer-term prospects for agreement on arms control.

U.S. analysts contend that Gorbachev himself went beyond the formal Soviet offer by endorsing the elimination of all nuclear weapons, down to bombs and artillery shells, in the last hectic hours of the summit; some evidence for this view appears in published documents, they say.

Gorbachev Criticism?

One U.S. official even went so far as to suggest that Gorbachev might be experiencing some criticism within the Kremlin for overstepping pre-summit positions, much as Reagan has been criticized in Washington.

Whatever it has meant for Gorbachev, the controversy has created substantial difficulties for Reagan, not only over his credibility but with some of his North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies and within his own still-divided Administration.

For one thing, Reagan has caused problems for one of his staunchest allies, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, by making the concept of total nuclear disarmament more respectable. Her chief political opponent, Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock, is committed to unilaterally scrapping Britain’s submarine-launched nuclear missile force, as well as withdrawing from NATO.

“Mrs. Thatcher does have a problem,” one Administration official acknowledged.

The U.S.-Soviet dispute over the Reykjavik summit began almost immediately after the meeting ended, and it appears rooted in how each side attempted to minimize blame for its collapse before its domestic audience as well as international opinion.

What Might Have Been

Shultz, coming directly from the final Reagan-Gorbachev session, told a press conference that “the agreement-that-might-have-been said (that) during this 10-year period (when strategic defenses would be barred) in effect all offensive strategic arms and ballistic missiles would be eliminated.”

He was asked whether “you had within your grasp the possibility of eliminating all offensive missiles within a 10-year period if there had been that ultimate final concession by the President on SDI?”

He did not contradict the description of the proposed agreement, although he said that was “not the way to think about it, because while we had set out many sweeping and potentially very significant things, . . . they only (would come) to pass as a result of scuttling the SDI program.”

President Reagan was more careful that day, reading from a statement prepared by his aides who knew only of the formal U.S. proposal not of the final session of discussion. At the Keflavik air base before leaving Iceland, he said:

‘Most Far-Reaching’ Proposal

“I made to the general secretary (Gorbachev) an entirely new proposal: a 10-year delay in deployment of SDI in exchange for the complete elimination of all ballistic missiles from the respective arsenals of both nations . . . We put on the table the most far-reaching arms control proposal in history and the general secretary rejected it.”

That was indisputably correct, but there was more to the story.

Once the two leaders were back in their respective capitals, different positions emerged from the two sides.

Donald Regan told Los Angeles Times reporters at a breakfast meeting Oct. 14, that “We were going down to zero on all nuclear weapons. All . . . our reasoning was we have 10 years in which to match them on conventional weapons . . . Zero would have been zero. Everything. ‘Strategic offensive arms and ballistic missiles’ is the actual phrase used... (down to) shells, artillery shells.”

The President himself, on the same day, briefed members of Congress. According to Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), the ranking Democrat on Senate Armed Service Committee and and one of the most knowledgeable and influential members of Congress on arms issues, Reagan said, “We put on the table a proposal to eliminate within 10 years all nuclear ballistic missiles and everything else, including bombs.”

No White House Denial

The White House did not deny it.

In Moscow, meanwhile, Gorbachev went on television that night to disclose the precise wording of the text the Soviets had proposed:

“Within the first five years, through 1991, strategic offensive weapons of the two sides will be reduced. During the second five years of this 10-year period, the remaining 50% of strategic offensive weapons of the two sides will be eliminated. Thus by the end of 1996, the strategic weapons of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. will be totally eliminated.”

But the White House continued to finesse the issue, neither refuting nor accepting the Soviet view. Gorbachev went on television again on Oct. 15, clearly irked by what he called U.S. “misrepresentations,” “half truths” and attempts to “whitewash” the Administration “which came to the (summit) meeting unprepared.”

“It is alleged, for example, that during the past meeting the U.S. President did not agree to the Soviet proposal on a complete elimination of all strategic offensive arms of the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. by 1996,” Gorbachev said.

‘Without Special Enthusiasm’

“With all responsibility as a participant in the talks, I state: The President did, albeit without special enthusiasm, consent to the elimination of all--I emphasize--all, not only certain individual strategic offensive arms, to be destroyed precisely over 10 years, in two stages,” he said.

The White House then gave out this account: After the final recess, when the two leaders reconvened, “the President did ask the general secretary what he meant by elimination of ‘all strategic forces.’ The general secretary responded that he would favor elimination of ‘all nuclear weapons.’ The President indicated that elimination of all nuclear weapons had always been his goal. The discussion then went on to the ABM treaty and SDI.”

Even this was not enough for Moscow, and last weekend, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander A. Bessmertnykh said Reagan had suggested that the Soviets wanted to eliminate only ballistic missiles, as the United States did. Gorbachev replied that the Soviets wanted to get rid of all strategic weapons.

“Apparently we misunderstood you,” the President was quoted as saying. “But if that’s what you want, all right.”

Bessmertnykh also quoted Reagan as saying: “If we agree that by the end of the 10-year period, all nuclear arms are to be eliminated, we can refer this to our delegations in Geneva to prepare an agreement that you could sign during your visit to the United States.”

It was with this version that the Administration now does not disagree. But officials continued to emphasize that “the discussions never reached the stage of any agreement” to eliminate all nuclear weapons.