Allies Fret More Over U.S. Policy Than Kremlin’s

With a mixture of fascination and dismay, America’s European allies have in recent weeks been absorbed in what they view as a startling reversal in the style and image of political life in Moscow and Washington.

From Moscow, the jubilant faces of such freed Soviet dissidents as Andrei D. Sakharov appear on their television screens, and an energetic Mikhail S. Gorbachev talks about bold political and economic reform to audiences that include Western film stars, American politicians and Sakharov himself.

Across the world, the lines on President Reagan’s once-buoyant face seem to have deepened as his Administration, traumatized by the Iran arms scandal, sinks deeper into disarray.

Europeans once preoccupied with the effort to determine who held the real power behind a succession of ailing, infirm Soviet leaders have suddenly shifted their focus westward.

“Who now runs Mr. Reagan’s America?” a headline in London’s conservative Daily Telegraph asked recently.

‘A Total Reversal’

“It’s all a total reversal of the norm,” said James Eberle, director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. “We’re in a position where Soviet policy seems to be pragmatically driven while U.S. policy is increasingly ideologically directed by issues like ‘Star Wars,’ ” Reagan’s space-based missile defense system, formally known as the Strategic Defense Initiative.

While there is debate on this side of the Atlantic about the degree of substance in Gorbachev’s initiatives and what they mean, there is little doubt that they carry at least the seeds of significant change.

“Let us take Gorbachev seriously,” West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher said earlier this month. “Let us take him at his word.”

By contrast, the confusion in Washington, stunning disclosures of clandestine arms sales to Iran and the diversion of profits to the Nicaraguan guerrillas, have already weakened the Administration’s leverage with its allies in certain key areas and eroded confidence in its ability to deal effectively in others.

French Admired Reagan

Nowhere in Europe has the view of the Administration changed more dramatically than in France, a country where Reagan was admired as the strong, genial, determined President who had restored America’s self-confidence.

Today, disillusioned French officials and political commentators worry openly that Washington is too preoccupied by the Iran arms scandal to react constructively to important changes in Moscow. They say the Administration’s rudderless leadership has contributed to tension within the alliance.

Columnist Yves Cuau, writing for France’s largest-circulation news magazine, L’Express, blamed “all the bad weather in the United States since Irangate” for tension among the European nations on issues of commerce, defense and terrorism.

U.S. Influence Weakened

On the issue of terrorism, this tension has exposed how seriously weakened American influence has become. A meeting of Western officials scheduled last month in Rome to discuss the Middle East hostage problem was canceled with little protest from Washington, which had wanted the meeting.

The West German government, meanwhile, has dragged its feet on extraditing Mohammed Ali Hamadi, who is wanted by U.S. authorities in connection with the June, 1985 hijacking of a Trans World Airlines plane to Beirut and the murder of an American passenger.

West German nationals are among those held captive in Lebanon, and Bonn is concerned Hamadi’s extradition might place the hostages in greater danger.

Washington, which less than a year ago used strong moral persuasion on its European allies to take tougher anti-terrorist action, has now lost this moral high ground in addition to much of its political leverage on terrorist-related issues.

Hurt by Duplicity

“The duplicity of bargaining with Iran has hurt the Americans badly,” commented an official at Britain’s Foreign Office. “It’s hard to take them at their word (on the terrorist issue).”

The confusion in Washington and dramatic signals of change in the Soviet Union occur at a time when countries of the European Communities have begun to achieve the beginnings of a political consensus on some international issues.

Mounting European concern that a Washington administration crippled by the Iran affair could leave Western interests unprotected is likely to encourage greater political cooperation among community countries, analysts here believe. Few here predict that any of this translates into a loosening of the Atlantic Alliance, but it does raise the prospect of a more active Western Europe, with additional influence implied by collective rather than individual action.

Bid to Fill Vacuum

Last week, the Common Market’s 12 member governments threw their collective weight behind Gorbachev’s call for an international peace conference on the Middle East. This was seen in part as an attempt to fill a vacuum created by the absence of constructive initiatives in a part of the world where American involvement once dominated events.

The Soviet suggestion, contained in a letter from Gorbachev to Belgian Foreign Minister Leo Tindemans, marked the first time that Moscow has formally acknowledged political cooperation among the Common Market governments.

“The jealousies between European states are giving way to unity in a common cause,” the Financial Times’ respected political commentator, Malcolm Rutherford, said in a recent article. “Western Europe, in short, is starting to assert itself.”

Speaking of the two primary forces influencing the need for unity, Rutherford cited doubts about the United States and a new interest in the future of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev.

New Soviet Attitude

A new Soviet attitude at the Geneva arms talks, assessed by America’s Western allies as more serious and purposeful than at any time in recent memory, has also sharpened the European edginess at the Reagan Administration’s policies on arms control, which are generally perceived as erratic.

In a recent interview, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl cited Gorbachev’s new attitude as opening the prospect for a substantive control agreement.

“In intra-alliance negotiations, the American hand is weakened when it is unclear what its policy is,” said Michael Palliser, chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

‘No Clear Direction’

And Lawrence Freedman, an arms control specialist at London University’s Kings College, said: “He (Reagan) sends out a series of contradictory signals with no clear direction. It’s the most non-pragmatic U.S. administration in memory.”

Paul H. Nitze, the senior State Department arms control adviser, and Richard N. Perle, the assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, encountered little enthusiasm last week as they toured Western Alliance capitals advising leaders that the Administration is considering a broader interpretation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that would permit testing of a space defense system. They are reportedly seeking to reassure the allied governments that they would be consulted before Washington finally decides.

West German Foreign Minister Genscher has written Secretary of State George P. Shultz asking that Washington stay within a narrow interpretation of the treaty that would preclude the testing.

British Reservations

British Defense Secretary George Younger, after meeting with U.S. officials in Washington last week, expressed strong reservations about any U.S. reinterpretation of the ABM Treaty.

“We would certainly make our views very clear,” Younger said.

Aside from listening and urging, however, America’s Western allies have little influence on the Administration’s conduct at the Geneva arms talks.

Where Europeans do have considerable influence and power is in the area of trade, where the prospect of a series of bitter trade disputes carries more serious implications for alliance relations.

By the very nature of these trade issues, which tend to pit the United States against the Common Market as a whole, Western Europe stands as a bloc.

Confrontation Defused

Last month, negotiators managed to defuse a confrontation stemming from Spain’s new tariffs on U.S. grain, imposed as a consequence of Spain’s membership in the European Economic Community, but a new dispute surrounding exports of the government-subsidized European Airbus now threatens to poison the atmosphere.

“I expect these disputes to increase in number,” a senior British government official said.

An Administration that projects an image of confusion and uncertainty in other areas could easily find its bargaining position weakened on key trade issues, analysts here believe.

Times staff writers William Tuohy in Bonn and Stanley Meisler in Paris contributed to this article.