Thatcher Says Gorbachev Offers Hope of Arms Curbs

After what she called the most fascinating and invigorating foreign trip in her eight years as British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher said Tuesday that marathon talks with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev have convinced her that progress on arms control is possible.

“We agree that progress on arms control will only be made by using a stage-by-stage approach with clearly identified priorities,” Thatcher said at a news conference. “We have identified the priorities together. I regard this as a useful and positive step.”

Thatcher’s comments followed nine hours of near-continuous private talks with Gorbachev on Monday. She later canceled her official evening schedule Tuesday to dine privately with the Soviet leader and his wife, Raisa.

Earlier Tuesday, she held two hours of talks with Soviet Premier Nikolai I. Ryzhkov and lunched with physicist Andrei D. Sakharov, the country’s best-known human rights advocate who was released from internal exile only four months ago.

Thatcher said Gorbachev had given her “remarkable insights” during their discussion.

According to British officials, the two leaders often engaged in a kind of verbal combat that was said to be often intense but never hostile.

“When I first met Mr. Gorbachev in December, 1984, I said he was someone I could do business with,” she recalled. “Well, we were able to do a lot of business yesterday.”

Despite the length of the talks and the unusual atmosphere that surrounded them, they produced few concrete results. Only minor Anglo-Soviet agreements dealing with increased trade, scientific and cultural contact were achieved.

However, the obvious rapport established between the two leaders and Thatcher’s assessment of Gorbachev and his positions on arms control and human rights could be extremely important in focusing the larger East-West dialogue and shaping future U.S. contact with the Soviets.

Thatcher’s reputation as President Reagan’s closest, most trusted European ally is expected to increase the importance of such a relationship.

British officials said there are no plans for an immediate meeting between Thatcher and Reagan but that the two would certainly be in contact with each other.

Shultz Due Soon

Secretary of State George P. Shultz is scheduled here for three days of meetings with Soviet leaders beginning April 13, talks that some predict could pave the way for a Reagan-Gorbachev summit some time later this year.

British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe, who accompanied Thatcher here, is expected to brief Shultz extensively next week in Washington before his American counterpart leaves for Moscow.

At her news conference, Thatcher said her talks with Gorbachev had given each side a better understanding of the others’ goals.

“When you have talked that length, it’s investment in the bank,” she said. “You begin to understand how someone else’s mind works; you begin to understand their objectives and they begin to understand yours.”

She said they had agreed that the immediate priority in East-West arms control negotiations should be to reach agreement on eliminating medium-range nuclear missiles from Europe. They also agreed that such an accord should include strict verification, she said, with constraints on shorter-range nuclear missiles--the so-called theater weapons--and immediate follow-on negotiations to deal with them.

However, she noted that the talks also defined major differences between the Soviets and the Western alliance on the nature of these follow-on negotiations.

The Soviet Union has about 130 SS-12 and SS-13 short-range weapons in Europe while the United States has none. Moscow has called for a freeze in deployment of these shorter-range missiles during negotiations.

“The West believes in a Soviet freeze but also in the right to match Soviet shorter-range systems,” she said.

Mood of Openness

Thatcher referred repeatedly during her news conference to the new mood of openness in the Soviet Union and the broadening discussion about the country’s future.

She said that on human rights, Gorbachev assured her that individual cases of those requesting exit visas will continue to be dealt with carefully and, where possible, positively. The issue has an important bearing on the arms control issue, she said, because trust and confidence established by strengthening human rights would help underpin an arms control agreement.

“I believe it is in the interests not only of the Soviet Union, but the wider world that things are more open in the Soviet Union and much, much more widely discussed,” she commented.

The extent of the change so far in the Soviet Union was underscored by her lunch at the British Embassy with Sakharov, until recently the most visible opponent of the Soviet political system.

Impossible 2 Years Ago

He reportedly told Thatcher, “Two years ago you could not imagine sitting around a lunch like this.”

As he left the embassy, Sakharov told reporters that he had discussed human rights with Thatcher, including “people locked up in psychiatric hospitals and people in labor camps.” But he said the release of political prisoners had to be a gradual process, noting that about 100 people had so far been freed.

Veteran Soviet observers said the press treatment of Thatcher’s visit itself reflects the change under Gorbachev’s leadership. They noted that a front-page account in the main Communist Party daily Pravda reporting the sharp differences between Thatcher and Gorbachev constituted a total break with previous precedents.

Thatcher’s speech was also reported, complete with references to Soviet domination in chemical weapons and her spirited defense of nuclear arms as a guarantor of world peace, a view completely at odds with official Soviet policy.