Gorbachev Denies Trying to Divide West

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev denied in an interview published Wednesday that Moscow is trying to split the United States from Western Europe and said the East-West division of Europe contributed to stability.

In remarks to the Italian Communist Party daily newspaper L’Unita, reprinted here in the government newspaper Pravda, Gorbachev also said he will pursue his liberalization of Soviet society despite sluggish bureaucrats. But he said the West was mistaken if it thought he was trying to introduce Western-style democracy rather than to fulfill Lenin’s egalitarian dream.

‘To Put It Mildly, Nonsense’

Asked to comment on some Westerners’ fears that Moscow aims to use European detente to split the Atlantic Alliance, Gorbachev said, “As for driving wedges between Western Europe and the United States, this is, to put it mildly, nonsense. . . .

“The historical relationships between Western Europe and the United States or, say, between the Soviet Union and European socialist countries are a political reality. This must not be ignored if one is to pursue a realistic policy. A different approach could upset the existing equilibrium in Europe.”

Gorbachev’s remarks were an implicit rejection of the view that Moscow was prepared to urge establishment of a neutral, reunified Germany. West Germany has been rife with rumors this month that Gorbachev is preparing to make Bonn an offer along these lines. East German officials have rejected the idea, and most diplomats in Moscow gave the rumors little credence.

On arms control, Gorbachev said an agreement on medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe was feasible but accused the West of stalling by forging an endless chain of links between different classes of weapons.

“At first they said the medium-range missile issue could not be resolved without simultaneously destroying theater (shorter range) missiles. Then they began to throw in tactical nuclear weapons, battlefield nuclear weapons and finally even conventional arms. . . . These problems may not, in our view, be used for stone-walling,” he said.

Asian Weapons

Gorbachev said in a speech Tuesday that Moscow would accept a call by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for the elimination of all Soviet SS-20 medium-range missiles worldwide only if U.S. nuclear weapons were removed from Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.

Discussing his domestic policies, Gorbachev said, “Some people would very much like to convince their readers and listeners that the Soviet Union has at last embarked on the type of democracy existing in the West. “Things stand, I would say, quite to the contrary,.” he said.

He said that domestic resistance to his policies took the form of “old approaches, the inertia of old habits and fear of novelty and responsibility for specific deeds. We are also being hampered by encrusted bureaucratic layers.”

He said he and other officials who had “passed through a big school of practical work in the provinces” had collectively recognized that the nation was stagnating under the late President Leonid I. Brezhnev.

‘There Would Be Someone’

“I disagree with what is sometimes said that the course towards the renewal of socialism is personally associated with the name of Gorbachev. . . . If there were no Gorbachev, there would have been someone else,” he said.

On Afghanistan, Gorbachev rejected the view that the Soviet Union wanted a political settlement of the conflict that would leave the country in the Soviet sphere of influence.

He said the Afghan Communist leadership is free to seek partners for its “national reconciliation” program, which Kabul portrays as an attempt to end the war.