Reagan Sees Major Step to East-West Arms Pact : He Hails West Germany’s Conditional OK of Soviet Plan for Missile Reductions in Europe

President Reagan on Thursday hailed West Germany’s conditional acceptance of the Soviets’ arms reduction proposal as a major step in providing a foundation for a U.S.-Soviet agreement eliminating short- and medium-range missiles from Europe.

Bonn’s decision, outlined by Chancellor Helmut Kohl in a speech to the West German Parliament on Thursday and endorsed by a 239-189 parliamentary vote, sets the stage for a common position on the arms reduction agreement by the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies.

Reagan, in Venice to attend the seven-nation economic summit opening Monday, said that based on discussions within NATO and those that will occur at the summit, he is confident that “a foundation will be laid for equal and verifiable global restraints” on U.S. and Soviet short- and medium-range missiles in the “near future.”

The President, who outlined his views in a prepared statement released here, suggested that a common NATO position on the arms proposal will be established by the NATO foreign ministers when they meet in Reykjavik, Iceland, after the economic summit ends next Wednesday.

Bonn’s decision to conditionally embrace the Soviet proposal also increases chances that Reagan will meet in Washington with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said.

In answer to a question, Fitzwater said he knew of no plans for Secretary of State George P. Shultz to meet with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze to discuss a possible summit.

Earlier in Washington, Paul H. Nitze, special assistant on arms control to both Reagan and Shultz, said it may be necessary for Shultz and Shevardnadze to meet this summer before any U.S.-Soviet summit that may develop.

The Bonn government’s decision accepting the so-called “double-zero” arms reduction proposal contained only one major condition: that West Germany be permitted to retain its 72 Pershing 1A missiles with U.S.-controlled nuclear warheads.

The United States has insisted on the same provision in its conditional acceptance in principle of the Soviet proposal. And U.S. officials have suggested that the Soviets don’t feel strongly enough about the issue to let it stand in the way of completing the arms reduction agreement.

The only major issue now blocking the way, apparently, is agreement on means of monitoring and verifying compliance with the pact’s provisions for dismantling the missiles.

Reagan said that once a unified NATO position on the arms agreement is established at the Reykjavik meeting of foreign ministers, he will instruct U.S. negotiators at the arms talks in Geneva to incorporate it into the official U.S. position.

NATO actions on the arms talks, he said, “represent a major success story.”

He pointed out that NATO has continued to pursue arms reductions even while responding to the deployment of Soviet SS-20 missiles in Eastern Europe by deploying its own missiles in Western Europe.

‘Arms Reduction Agreement’

“It is the fact,” he said, “that NATO was willing to deploy its own . . . missiles while simultaneously seeking a balanced and verifiable arms reduction agreement that brought the Soviets back to the negotiating table in 1985 and gave us the opportunity to achieve--for the first time in history--deep reductions in, and possibly the elimination of, an entire class of nuclear weapons.”

A White House official traveling with the President said that Reagan is facing recommendations from some intelligence experts within the Administration that he shift the U.S. negotiating position regarding the thorny issue of verification of an arms agreement. Another official, Thomas C. Griscom, the President’s assistant for communications, said he expects a decision before NATO foreign ministers meet next week.

In the view of some intelligence officials, inclusion of certain on-site inspection provisions of the agreement under negotiation with Moscow would allow Soviet inspectors to learn too much about U.S. intelligence-gathering capabilities.

Griscom said that Shultz, on his way to the NATO meeting in Reykjavik after the Venice conference, would need clear guidance from the White House if the U.S. position was to be shifted. He said no recommendations have yet been placed before Reagan.

Rainy Thursday

The President and his wife, Nancy, spent the rainy Thursday at Villa Condulmer, their temporary residence until the summit conference begins Monday.

Fitzwater said that the Reagans went for a walk on the grounds of the villa 12 miles north of Venice, and the President also reviewed briefing books for the summit.

White House officials, meanwhile, saw little sign Thursday that--before the three-day summit ends--Reagan would lift the trade sanctions he placed on Japan in April. He imposed tariffs on $300-million worth of Japanese electronic products in retaliation for the alleged violation of a 1986 agreement to stop selling computer chips at unfairly low prices in third-country markets.

Fitzwater said the topic will be discussed at the summit, in the context of international trade, and that raw data on Japanese trade performance has been assembled for the President.

But, Griscom said, “I don’t think there has been any movement at all to go in and undo the original decision.”

Persian Gulf Issue

Fitzwater also said that in his effort to win support of the six other leaders at the meeting, Reagan would explain the history of U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf, the war-troubled waterway through which much of Japan’s and Western Europe’s oil must pass.

In transferring to the United States the registration of 11 Kuwaiti oil tankers, the United States has taken on the task of protecting the vessels with American warships and is seeking support from the others at the summit for this action, as well as greater coordination and cooperation in keeping open the crucial Strait of Hormuz, the gulf’s outlet to the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Fitzwater indicated that “the thrust” of the President’s argument will be to explain U.S. policy in the region, given greater attention in the aftermath of the Iraqi attack that killed 37 sailors aboard the U.S. frigate Stark. And he refused to predict whether the allies would produce greater military support.

He said that Reagan will press his summit partners for support of a U.N. resolution calling for a cease-fire in the 6 1/2-year-old war between Iran and Iraq and a return to prewar borders.