Thatcher Prods Soviets on Rights Issue, Afghanistan

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told Mikhail S. Gorbachev today that he can count on greater trust from the West if he meets all human rights commitments and quickly withdraws Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

“We will reach our judgments not on intentions or on promises, but on deeds and on results,” the Conservative British leader said in a highly critical speech prepared for delivery at a state banquet in the Grand Kremlin Palace.

The Soviet leader, in the text of his dinner speech distributed by the Foreign Ministry, repeated the Kremlin position that Moscow is seeking a political solution to the bloody Afghan conflict.

Discussion Offered

He also said the Soviet leadership was ready to “openly and loudly” discuss human rights issues if the topics include unemployment, homelessness and discrimination in the West.

“If we’re going to talk about human rights, let’s talk about all rights, especially those that touch millions of people,” Gorbachev said.

Thatcher, on the third day of her official visit to the Soviet Union, pressed the West’s case for arms control agreements, starting with elimination of medium-range nuclear weapons from Europe, along with restraints on shorter-range rockets.

Too Many Demands

In reply, Gorbachev accused the West of weighing down proposals for an agreement with “a package of conditions and demands on the Soviet Union.”

The Soviets have opposed linking the issue of their shorter-range tactical rockets in Czechoslovakia and East Germany with an accord on the medium-range missiles deployed in Europe by both superpowers.

Thatcher repeated her support for President Reagan’s “Star Wars” space-based defense project, which is vigorously opposed by the Soviets.

After a full day of what British sources called “frank and vigorous” talks with Gorbachev in the Kremlin, Thatcher said she welcomed his new policy of glasnost , or openness.

Thatcher said her visit had come at a “very exciting and stimulating moment in your national affairs.”

“You have certainly embarked on a great endeavor,” she said. “We most earnestly wish you and your people well.”

But the main thrust of her speech was what she called “the most crucial question of all: that of how to establish greater confidence and trust between the countries of East and West.”

Speaking of human rights, she said:

“The extent to which you, the Soviet government, meet the commitments which you have freely undertaken in the Helsinki Final Act will determine how far other countries and other peoples have confidence in the undertakings which you give on, for instance, arms control.”

The Helsinki Accords, which the Soviet union and 34 other countries signed in 1975, laid down a charter for human rights observance.