Soviets Accused of ‘Perverting’ Summit Process

A former State Department counselor said Wednesday that the Soviet Union “chose to pervert the summit process” and attempted to “bushwhack” President Reagan when he met with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev at Reykjavik in October.

“I believe it was a professionally irresponsible way to attempt to use summitry,” Helmut Sonnenfeldt said, adding: “If this summit had come during a crisis . . . and was used as the Soviets chose to use it this time,” it could have been extremely dangerous.

Sonnenfeldt made his comments to the House Armed Services Committee, which has been reviewing the intensely controversial Reagan-Gorbachev talks that took strategic arms negotiations into uncharted territory, then broke up without agreement.

When the hearings opened last month, committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.) criticized what he called the Administration’s “casual” conduct of the far-reaching talks, saying he was “flabbergasted” by Reagan’s offer to eliminate all ballistic missiles in 10 years.

Sonnenfeldt, who served in the State Department during the Administrations of Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, appeared before the committee along with four other former arms negotiators, including the chiefs of the delegations that negotiated the first and second strategic arms limitation treaties with the Soviets.

Unanimously Skeptical

Responding to questions from Aspin and Rep. Charles E. Bennett (D-Fla.), the former arms negotiators were unanimously skeptical about the elimination of all ballistic missiles. They did not agree, however, with Sonnenfeldt’s assessment that Reagan had been “bushwhacked” when he went to Reykjavik expecting a “pre-summit” or “mini-summit” meeting and found himself in intense discussion involving major strategic arms reductions.

Louis G. Fields Jr., who headed the U.S. delegation to Geneva arms control negotiations from 1981 to 1985, said the Reagan Administration “could have anticipated that the Soviets had something up their sleeve, and, indeed, I think we should have.”

Paul C. Warnke, the chief U.S. arms negotiator during the Carter Administration, added: “If we went there thinking it was going to be a social weekend in beautiful Reykjavik, then, as a taxpayer, I resent it because we took so many people.”

Gerard C. Smith, who led the U.S. delegation in the SALT I negotiations during the Nixon Administration, suggested that the United States jumped too quickly to accept the Soviet suggestion for the Iceland session, which, presumably, was to have set the stage for a full-scale Washington summit between the two leaders.

Decision Criticized

The United States accepted Gorbachev’s proposal for the Iceland meeting in just 24 hours, Smith said, on the advice of of White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan and the then-national security adviser, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter. “To my mind,” he added, “that is not really the way to prepare for a summit meeting.”

After discussing the most far-reaching strategic arms proposals in the history of U.S.-Soviet arms negotiations, Reagan and Gorbachev reached a stalemate over the United States’ adamant refusal to confine testing of its “Star Wars” space-based defense program to the laboratory.

The former negotiators said the Reykjavik meeting should not be dismissed as a failure, but Warnke said the Iceland disagreement over the space defense project, formally known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, could have profound impact.

“The worst result of Reykjavik,” Warnke said, “was that Mr. Gorbachev may have come away from there believing there is no chance of a compromise on strategic defenses--accepting that there is going to be a race” in defensive weapons systems.