Reagan Sees Some Soviet Shifting to U.S. Positions

President Reagan conceded Saturday that the Soviet Union has edged closer to U.S. positions on some key issues such as arms control and human rights, but he said that Communist interference in Afghanistan, Nicaragua and other regional trouble spots must cease before superpower relations can significantly improve.

In the first broadcast remarks since his admission of error Wednesday in the Iran- contra scandal, Reagan said the Soviets “supply billions of dollars in weapons to regimes like Libya, Syria, Cuba, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Ethiopia, South Yemen and Angola” even as they relax human rights controls and move toward nuclear arms agreements.

The President warned that “as long as they keep this up, East-West tensions will continue.”

Reagan’s statements underscored his bid to preserve $40 million of unspent U.S. aid for the Nicaraguan rebels that was allotted by Congress last year but is endangered by disclosures that the National Security Council played a key secret role in the Central American war.

Administration critics, led by House Democrats, will seek this week to block the release of the unspent funds until the White House accounts for the spending of past U.S. assistance to the rebels.

But congressional Democrats, responding to the speech, said that Reagan cannot count on public backing for his policies until he fully explains the Iran-contra affair and gives more than token backing to Central American peace proposals offered by nations such as Costa Rica.

Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez last month offered a regional peace plan that would impose cease-fires on guerrilla wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala and end the presence of foreign military advisers from the United States and Cuba.

Nicaragua has already rejected the plan, which was drafted without its advice.

Seeks to Shift Focus

In his weekly radio address from Camp David, Md., Reagan sought to shift the focus of debate away from the White House and back to the Soviet threat in the Third World.

The President allowed that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev has made positive moves in “some” aspects of East-West relations, an apparent reference to the Soviet Union’s recent freeing of several well-known dissidents and its new offers last week in intermediate-range nuclear missile negotiations.

But he said U.S.-Soviet relations depend on progress in four areas: arms control, human rights, people-to-people exchanges and regional trouble spots. Secretary of State George P. Shultz will go to Moscow in April to seek improvements in all four areas, not merely arms control, he said.

Saying that he is “particularly disappointed” by the lack of progress on regional issues, the President urged Congress and U.S. allies to wear down Soviet support by strongly backing resistance movements in Communist-controlled nations.

Says Rebels Growing

Reagan asserted that Afghan resistance forces are growing in strength and destroying the credibility of Afghanistan’s Soviet-backed regime. And he called the anti-Sandinista contras “the largest, fastest-growing volunteer peasant force in Latin America in almost a century.”

“Although Afghanistan and Nicaragua are thousands of miles apart,” Reagan said, “solving their problems depends on the very same thing--a chance for them and their neighbors to live without fear of aggression, a chance for the people to choose their own destiny.”

Congress “took a stand for democracy” last year by approving $100 million in military and other aid to the contras, Reagan said. Now “we must continue to stand by these brave young men and women” by releasing the unspent $40 million and approving an economic aid package for Central America submitted to Congress by the White House last week.

Democrat Responds

In the Democratic response, Michigan Rep. David E. Bonoir said that Reagan’s efforts to remedy the Iran-contra scandal are “not enough” so far to justify funneling more money to the contras and that the House would seek to hold up further spending until the public receives “a clear accounting of (how) their tax dollars” were spent.

“Time and again, the law was broken to keep funds flowing to the contras, even when Congress explicitly prohibited it,” he said. “Time and again, the Administration has lied to the American people” about the swap of arms and hostages in Iran, secret cash aid to the contras and the National Security Council’s covert operations in Central America.

While asserting that the contra war already has cost the United States $1 billion, Bonoir said the greatest cost has been paid in Central America, where he said 12,000 people have died. He called on Reagan to back the Arias peace proposal, which he said has “breathed new life into the search for peace in Central America.”