Shultz and Shevardnadze Meet Today in Bid to Salvage Iceland Progress

Amid renewed hopes for progress in arms control, Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze will meet here today in an effort to salvage as much as possible from the Iceland summit talks.

Expectations are that the Kremlin will outline its new arms position here in private meetings of the two officials and will present it formally next week at the Geneva arms negotiations.

There is also some hope that the two sides will move toward creating a new negotiating forum--on nuclear testing--and perhaps return to discussions about a date for a new U.S.-Soviet summit meeting in Washington.

Both sides have insisted that real progress was made at the meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Oct. 11-12 before that meeting collapsed without agreement, primarily because of disagreement on the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative.

Some Modifications

The United States introduced new proposals two weeks ago at the Geneva arms control talks on offensive and defensive strategic weapons. Essentially these were a reiteration of earlier U.S. positions, with some modifications to reflect the Iceland talks.

The Soviets have not yet presented their new proposals. Their chief negotiator, Ambassador Viktor P. Karpov, has been back in Moscow since the Reykjavik meeting, presumably formulating the new Kremlin stand.

In his absence, Soviet diplomats at Geneva have basically marked time. Partly because of this, and partly in anticipation of new Soviet proposals, the Geneva talks, which were to have ended Tuesday, have been extended for at least a week.

Meanwhile, Shultz told reporters on his aircraft en route to Vienna that he also intends to press Shevardnadze during the meetings to reconsider Moscow’s support for Syria on the issue of Damascus’ involvement in the attempted bombing of an Israeli airliner.

The secretary said he plans to remonstrate with his counterpart over Soviet complaints that Britain fabricated its charges of Syrian involvement in a plot to blow up an El Al Israel Airlines jumbo jet en route from London to Israel.

“The Soviet expressions about Syria are ones that I’m going to urge him (Shevardnadze) to reconsider in light of the facts,” Shultz said. “This wasn’t any trumped-up thing by the British.”

Analysts base their relatively high expectations for the Shultz-Shevardnadze meeting here--it coincides with the latest review conference on the Helsinki accords--in part on the upbeat comments of Soviet officials and on post-summit conclusions that Gorbachev had wanted real progress at Reykjavik despite the disappointing outcome.

For example, Gennady I. Gerasimov, spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry, has been quoted as saying that Shevardnadze would not come “empty-handed” to the Vienna meeting with Shultz.

Gorbachev himself said earlier this week that he favors another meeting with Reagan if it is based on understandings reached in Reykjavik, which, he maintained, have “brought about a fundamentally new international situation.”

Although new Soviet arms proposals are expected here, experts caution that the new offers will not necessarily mean immediate advances beyond Reykjavik since the Soviets, for tactical negotiating purposes, may pull back some concessions they made there.

In post-summit comments, the Soviets have muddied their position sufficiently on key issues in all three areas of the Geneva arms talks--long-range offensive weapons, intermediate-range missiles and space defense matters--to make predictions about the new Soviet stance very difficult.

Linkage an Issue

In particular, some Soviet officials, including Gorbachev, have again tied progress on intermediate-range missiles to some curb on the U.S. space defense program, which is formally known as the Strategic Defense Initiative and popularly called “Star Wars.”

Others have insisted that there was no linkage, and still others contend that negotiations on the offensive missiles can go forward but agreements cannot be signed until the space defense issues are also resolved.

One of the key differences between the U.S and Soviet positions--on how much work would be permitted on missile defenses over the next 10 years--has also been the subject of confusing, even conflicting statements from Moscow since the summit talks.

In Reykjavik, Gorbachev demanded that such work be restricted to research “within the walls of a laboratory.” But a senior Soviet space scientist, Dr. Raold Sagdeev, recently told a U.N. meeting that by Soviet definition orbiting space stations are considered to be laboratories, thus suggesting that SDI research could be conducted in space.

On long-range strategic weapons, U.S. and Soviet experts in an all-night session at Reykjavik settled on the target of a five-year, 50% reduction--to a total of 1,600 “delivery vehicles” (land-based missiles, submarine-based missiles and bombers) carrying a total of 6,000 warheads.

They also agreed that sub-ceilings for each category of delivery vehicles were needed, but they were far from agreement on what the secondary but vitally important limits should be.

Move to Accommodate

The latest U.S. proposal, in this respect, sought to accommodate some Soviet positions taken in Iceland. For example, the Soviets offered an 80% to 85% ceiling on the number of warheads that could be carried on ballistic missiles (land-based and submarine-based combined). This multiplies out to 4,800 to 5,100 warheads, and the new U.S. proposal calls for 4,800 in this sub-ceiling instead of 4,500, which the United States proposed at Reykjavik.

Similarly, the Soviets at Reykjavik offered a ceiling of 60% on the number of warheads that could be permitted on any single leg of the “triad” of delivery systems. This calculates out at 3,600 warheads. The previous U.S. proposal called for a ceiling of 3,000 warheads on land-based ballistic missiles (the Soviet weapon the United States most fears), and its new proposal splits the difference by offering a 3,300 sub-ceiling on this category of weapons.

Finally, the Soviets at Reykjavik appeared to offer to cut in half the number of warheads on their biggest and most threatening land-based missile, the SS-18, from 3,080 to 1,500. The new U.S. proposal would allow Moscow to keep 1,650 warheads on such missiles, however, if the Soviets will count their new mobile missile, the SS-24, in this category when it is deployed. The SS-24, to be mounted on railroad cars, is scheduled for deployment in the near future.

Nuclear Testing Issues

At Iceland, according to senior U.S. officials, the two sides appeared to come closest to real agreement on setting up new negotiations on nuclear testing issues. Gorbachev outlined the Soviet position, which Reagan accepted because it was virtually the same as his own, these officials said.

But the issue was left unresolved when the two sides disagreed on the title that the new talks would have.

U.S. officials were particularly struck by the fact that the Soviets had dropped their previous insistence on an immediate halt to all underground nuclear tests. Implicit in their stand was that tests could continue during the new talks, which suggested to one senior official that the Soviets intend to resume testing early next year after their unilateral hiatus of 18 months expires in January.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster, on the Shultz aircraft, contributed to this article.