Soviets, India Urge Ban on All Nuclear Arms

India and the Soviet Union agreed Thursday on a 10-point “Declaration of Delhi” that calls for destruction of all nuclear arsenals by the year 2000.

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, appealing in an address to the Indian Parliament for Third World support for his arms control proposals, said only disarmament could release funds to abolish poverty, illiteracy and disease.

Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi endorsed Gorbachev’s plan to eliminate nuclear weapons, telling the Kremlin chief, “You personify innovation and boldness.”

Adopting one of the local customs, the 55-year-old Gorbachev pressed his palms together and bowed his head in the traditional Indian namaste as he entered the central hall of Parliament. He spoke there under a portrait of Mohandas K. Gandhi, the revered Indian nationalist leader and social reformer.

Nonaligned Movement

Agreement on the Declaration of Delhi came on the third day of the Soviet leader’s four-day visit, his first to this country, which takes pride in its leading role in the Nonaligned Movement, an organization of countries claiming not to be aligned with either of the superpowers.

At the same time, the two nations announced a new Soviet loan of about $2.2 billion to help India build a new hydroelectric plant and modernize a steel mill erected with Soviet aid more than 20 years ago.

Gorbachev again blamed President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative for blocking a historic arms control pact but said the Soviet Union refuses to abandon hope for agreement with the United States.

“We have enough political will, perseverance and patience to continue to seek far-reaching, radical agreements on the reduction and elimination of nuclear arms,” Gorbachev said in a speech at the Soviet House of Culture.

In the Delhi declaration, Gorbachev and Gandhi appealed for immediate world approval of a convention to bar the use or the threat of use of nuclear weapons until nuclear disarmament is achieved.

Apparently on India’s insistence, the declaration also approved of nonviolence as the basis of community life. It upheld the right of every state to “political and economic independence” without saying how this could be achieved.

Gorbachev thus enlisted Gandhi in his Kremlin peace offensive and received lavish praise from India’s 42-year-old leader that exceeded anything ever said by Pravda, the Soviet Communist Party newspaper.

‘Great and Dynamic Leader’

“We are honored to have in our midst the great and dynamic leader of a great a friendly country,” Gandhi told the Indian Parliament. “Few statesmen have caught the world’s imagination in so short a time as our eminent guest.”

India traditionally has looked to the Soviet Union for military aid and diplomatic support in conflicts with Pakistan and China.

Reports that the United States will provide Pakistan, India’s chief rival, with advanced airborne radar surveillance planes stirred fresh anti-American feelings in India on the eve of the Gorbachev visit.

In a talk to members of the Indo-Soviet Friendship Society, Gorbachev pictured the United States as an advocate of “power politics” that rejected “all compromises.”

Gorbachev reiterated his charge that Reagan’s refusal to limit research on the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly called “Star Wars,” had torpedoed agreement at the Iceland summit in mid-October.

‘Most Voracious Monster’

“Of all militaristic projects, the SDI is the most voracious monster,” Gorbachev said. “One may ask where the United States, with its $2-trillion national debt, will obtain the resources to finance it.”

The Soviet-American arms race, Gorbachev said, was draining enormous resources from development of the worst-off nations.

“Only the elimination of nuclear arms, a ban on space weapons, the destruction of chemical weapons and the principle of sufficiency in defense needs will provide the necessary resources from improving the life of nations,” he added.

In his address to the Indian Parliament, Gorbachev said that the Soviet Union and the United States have made a “huge step forward” in discovering what is possible in arms control talks.

“What the world saw six weeks ago in Reykjavik was not a mirage of a nuclear-free world . . . but a reality within reach which the two sides could attain even tomorrow, if they have the will and act responsibly,” Gorbachev added.

Afghanistan Issue Avoided

Despite the overall understanding on nuclear weapons, however, Gorbachev and Gandhi significantly were vague on the Soviet plan for an Asian-Pacific security agreement. They were silent on the touchy issue of Soviet intervention with more than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, an issue of major concern to India.

But Gorbachev clearly was pleased by his effusive welcome here and by Gandhi’s unrestricted adulation.

The Soviet hammer-and-sickle flag even flew over one wing of the palace where he and his wife, Raisa, are staying along with other senior members of the high-level Soviet delegation.

In addition to the extension of new Soviet long-term credits at low interest rates, Moscow and New Delhi also agreed:

--To open new Indian consulates in the cities of Tashkent, in Uzbekhistan, and Nadhodka, in the Soviet Far East.

--To arrange festivals in each other’s countries to expand cultural exchanges.

--To use Soviet advice in drilling for oil and mining of coking coal in India’s West Bengal state.

Gorbachev and Gandhi both signed the Declaration of Delhi in the presidential palace. Their aides signed other agreements on economic, cultural and consular affairs.

Raisa Gorbachev is full of questions on India visit. Page 26.