Soviets Offer Pact on Missiles, Drop Link to ‘Star Wars’ : In Major Shift, Gorbachev Proposes New Agreement on Europe Weapons

In a surprise move, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Saturday proposed a separate agreement with the United States to remove intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe without tying such an accord to curbs on President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.

Making what appeared to be a major switch in Kremlin policy, Gorbachev went along with the American position on breaking up the arms control package that Gorbachev had insisted upon during his summit meeting with Reagan last October in Reykjavik, Iceland.

At the Iceland summit, the Kremlin chief demanded a comprehensive agreement, embracing controls on long-range strategic weapons and on research for Reagan’s so-called “Star Wars” plan for space-based missile defenses as well as on the Euromissiles, as the medium-range weapons deployed by both sides in Europe are often called.

However, in a statement reported Saturday by the official news agency Tass, Gorbachev said that a separate accord on missiles in Eastern and Western Europe should be negotiated without delay to eliminate them within the next five years.

Welcomed Cautiously

In Washington, Administration officials welcomed Gorbachev’s statement but cautioned that details of the new Soviet position will have to be studied before its significance is clear. They said Moscow had evidently returned to a position it held in 1985, before the Reykjavik summit, when Soviet officials had indicated willingness to deal with the issue of medium-range weapons separately from questions of long-range strategic weapons, nuclear tests and space defense weapons.

“What we’re aware of (in Gorbachev’s statement) is a welcome development,” said an Administration official familiar with arms control issues, who asked not to be identified by name.

“But you have to read the fine print first, and you won’t know what it is until they sit down at the negotiating table” in arms control talks now under way in Geneva, the official said. The current round of those talks is scheduled to end Wednesday but could now be extended.

European Urging

Moscow’s new approach came after many West European leaders had strongly urged Gorbachev to break down the arms control package he was pressing for to let a separate deal be made on missiles in Europe. Dissident Soviet physicist Andrei D. Sakharov, recently released from seven years of internal exile, also supported that approach.

In announcing the switch, Gorbachev said:

“We were assured more than once that if the Soviet Union singles out the issue of medium-range missiles from the Reykjavik package, there would be no difficulty to agree to their elimination in Europe.

“A good opportunity is now being offered to prove that in practice.

“We are putting our proposals on the table of negotiations with the United States in Geneva,” Gorbachev said. “We are awaiting a speedy and positive reply.”

‘Positive Development’

In response to inquiries, a White House spokesman said a preliminary reading of Gorbachev’s statement suggested that it was a “positive development” and one the United States will consider carefully “in consultation with our allies.”

Deputy press secretary Dan Howard said the Administration has been working for some time on the detailed language of a draft treaty limiting medium-range missiles that would incorporate an understanding reached by Reagan and Gorbachev at the Reykjavik summit and expects to formally propose the treaty in Geneva “very soon.”

Officials said it is likely that the United States will propose its detailed treaty within the next few days. The understanding that Reagan and Gorbachev reached at Iceland was that medium-range missiles would be eliminated in Europe within five years. The Soviet Union would retain up to 100 medium-range warheads in its Asian territory, while the United States would keep an equal number of warheads on its own territory, presumably in Alaska.

The U.S. draft treaty will deal with issues not discussed in detail at Reykjavik, particularly the problem of verifying compliance, officials said.

Major Stumbling Block

Former U.S. Ambassador Arthur A. Hartman said here in Moscow last month that an agreement on medium-range missiles would be “practically within reach” if the Kremlin would drop its demand for a package deal embracing everything under discussion in Geneva.

The same theme was sounded frequently at a recent Moscow forum on nuclear disarmament attended by prominent scientists and public figures from more than 80 countries.

Gorbachev said Saturday that the Soviet Union would continue to insist that a ban on deployment of space weapons--such as “Star Wars”--be a part of any future accord on major reductions in such strategic weapons as intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Gorbachev addressed Western European concerns over shorter-range Soviet theater missiles, saying, “As soon as an agreement on eliminating Soviet and U.S. medium-range missiles in Europe is signed, the Soviet Union will withdraw . . . theater missiles from the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and Czechoslovakia by agreement with the governments of those countries.”

To Counter U.S. Threat

He said the Soviet Union put theater missiles in those countries to counter a threat from Pershing 2 and cruise missiles, medium-range weapons deployed by the United States under a North Atlantic Treaty Organization program to counter the Soviet SS-20 missiles deployed in Europe by the Soviet Union beginning in the 1970s.

“As far as other theater missiles are concerned, we are prepared to begin talks immediately with a view to reducing and fully eliminating them,” Gorbachev added, referring to shorter-range missiles based elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

“So, there is a real opportunity to free our common European home from a considerable portion of nuclear burden within the shortest possible time,” he added. “That would be a real and big step toward full deliverance of Europe from nuclear arms.”

According to U.S. intelligence estimates, the Soviet Union has deployed 441 of its triple-warhead SS-20 medium-range missiles since 1977, most of them in the European, or western, one-third of its territory. Under a decision taken by NATO in 1979 in response, the United States began in 1982 to deploy 572 Pershing 2 and ground-launched cruise missiles in Western Europe.

Reiterated Harder Line

Last Oct. 15, shortly after the Reykjavik summit had ended, Gorbachev reiterated the harder line he had taken in Iceland, insisting in a statement distributed by the Tass news agency that Soviet arms control proposals outlined at the summit “are inseparable from each other, and we do not remove any of them” for individual negotiation.

More recently, however, senior Soviet officials have hinted at renewed flexibility and stressed a determination to keep arms negotiations alive despite the Administration’s preoccupation with the Iran- contra scandal.

In mid-January, following a trip to the United States, Viktor G. Afanasyev, editor of the Communist Party newspaper Pravda, wrote that “we have formed the firm impression that Reagan will not be dethroned--that ‘Irangate’ will not turn into Watergate.”

“We have not written off Reagan and don’t intend to,” Afanasyev noted. “We are prepared to talk to him.”

‘New Way of Thinking’

Explaining Saturday’s announced change of negotiating tactics, Gorbachev said that the “new way of thinking” he advocates requires an ability to listen to European and world public opinion and understand the concerns of others.

He accused the United States of deliberately blocking progress at the Geneva talks by insisting on achievement of military superiority through space-based weapons.

“Despite all the difficulties and artificial obstructions, the Soviet Union is again showing its will to resolve the nuclear disarmament issue,” he added.

Times staff writer Robert Gillette contributed to this story from Washington.