Reagan Impact Slight on Venice Conference : President Voices Hope for U.S.-Soviet Talks

President Reagan said Thursday that there is an increased opportunity for a U.S.-Soviet summit conference and “for actual reductions of armaments, particularly of the nuclear kind.”

At a news conference after the economic summit here, Reagan said that it is up to the Soviet Union to set “the most appropriate or easiest time” for his third meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The President declined to venture a guess on the date of such a meeting.

White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. had said earlier in the week that low-level discussions involving specific dates were already under way.

Arms Control Gains

The President’s remarks reflected the particularly upbeat tone the Administration has adopted regarding a meeting with Gorbachev, apparently the result of progress toward an agreement on reducing the superpowers’ arsenals of short- and medium-range nuclear weapons.

The unity on arms control that emerged during the week, which Reagan spent meeting with allied leaders at the seven-nation economic summit, was the one major area in which the President could point to success without challenge.

The other particularly sensitive topic for the Administration that was raised here was the Persian Gulf. The Administration is planning to provide Navy protection for Kuwaiti tankers plying the gulf in an effort to underscore its determination to keep international sea lanes open.

Administration officials had hoped that the President would get an allied commitment of support for the U.S. military effort and for a pending U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire in the gulf and an arms embargo should Iran or Iraq refuse to abide by such an agreement. But the allies’ response, a vague statement endorsing “freedom of navigation” in the gulf, fell short of Administration expectations and left it primarily to the United States to enforce that position.

Still, Reagan said he heard no criticism of U.S. policy on the Persian Gulf.

The President said the allies “reaffirmed their support” for his policy, which calls for keeping the gulf’s trade routes open to all shipping, with military force if necessary, in the face of attacks by Iran and Iraq in the war that has gone on now for 6 1/2 years.

His counterparts from Britain, West Germany, Japan, France, Italy and Canada are now reassured that the United States will not “provoke some kind of increased hostility” in the gulf, the President said. “We’re there to deter that very thing,” he added.

Senior U.S. officials have repeatedly warned Iran not to deploy Chinese-made Silkworm missiles along the Strait of Hormuz, the only entrance to the gulf. But Reagan on Thursday declined to discuss possible military reprisals, saying, “I’m not going to answer a question like that.”

Soviet Stake Cited

He said the increased role of Soviet tankers in carrying Persian Gulf oil means that the Soviets “have a stake, too, in peaceful shipping and the openness of the international waters.”

But he stepped back from a suggestion advanced by his chief of staff that the increased role in the gulf made the Soviets “co-guarantors” of peace there.

In the particularly sensitive field of currencies, Reagan set off tremors in money markets with a statement indicating that a lower value for the dollar “could be within reason,” although “most of us believe that the dollar should remain stable.”

When the remark sent the dollar tumbling, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said, “What the President wants is stability for the dollar--in other words, no change.”

But that proved to be insufficient, and Fitzwater said later: “Here’s what the markets should be hearing: The President wants stability in the dollar. He recognizes that market forces can cause fluctuations, but he wants stability.”

‘Enhanced Cooperation’

The President’s 30-minute poolside news conference took place on the lawn at the Hotel Cipriani, where the President has been staying. Reagan, wearing a gray suit in the strong mid-afternoon sunshine, said in an opening statement that the seven nations taking part “have put the capstone on a new process for enhanced cooperation and coordination and have agreed jointly to take the policy steps necessary to assure sufficient world growth.”

During the three days of meetings, which ended Wednesday, Reagan met with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada, President Francois Mitterrand of France, Prime Minister Amintore Fanfani of Italy, Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone of Japan and Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany.

Today, he will deliver a speech in West Berlin and meet with Kohl in Bonn, where he will make a fueling stop before flying on to Washington. He arrived in Venice on June 3.

Reagan’s response to a question about the prospects for a meeting with Gorbachev reflected the degree to which the Soviet leader has been an unsettling figure in Venice, even though not present.

Reagan was asked whether his meetings here--and the expected endorsement of the U.S. arms negotiating position by North Atlantic Treaty Organization foreign ministers meeting in Iceland--had advanced the prospects for a session with Gorbachev. The President, a former sports announcer, recalled a baseball tradition and said:

“You trapped me a little bit there because my long years in sports and sports announcing and all made me very superstitious about calling the pitcher as doing a no-hitter before the game was over.

“I hesitate to make optimistic statements. Always have. But at the same time I can’t deny that I believe there is an increased opportunity for a summit conference, and an increased opportunity for actual reductions of armaments, particularly of the nuclear kind.”

Hint for Reporters

In the face of public opinion polls showing a surge of popularity in Western Europe for Gorbachev, whom the President called “a personable gentleman,” Reagan told reporters, “Maybe all of you could help change that, if you worked a little harder at it.”

He said Gorbachev “is the first Soviet leader in my memory that has ever advocated actually eliminating weapons already built and in place.”

He said Gorbachev, facing the economic costs of the Soviet military buildup, “has some pretty practical reasons for why he would like to see a successful outcome” to U.S.-Soviet arms reduction negotiations.

Under questioning, Reagan sought to clarify confusion about whether West Germany would prosecute Mohammed Ali Hamadi, a Lebanese Shia Muslim arrested on a weapons charge in West Germany but wanted for the killing of a U.S. Navy diver, Robert Dean Stethem, in Beirut in connection with the hijacking of a TWA airliner in June, 1985.

White House spokesman Fitzwater had said that Kohl had told Reagan that Hamadi would be tried in West Germany on a charge of murder and would not be extradited to the United States.

“It’s interesting to note,” Reagan said, “that the only question that remains is will Hamadi be tried for murder and hijacking in the United States, or will he be tried for murder and hijacking in Germany? Because that is what they intend to do.”

He said the West German government has not made a decision about whether to prosecute Hamadi or extradite him to the United States for trial, “but whichever way, he is going to be tried for the crime of killing our young Navy man in that hijacking.”

Iran-Contra Challenge

On the Iran- contra affair, Reagan challenged testimony before the congressional committees investigating the Iran arms sales and efforts to aid the anti-Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua.

Retired Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord and Albert Hakim, a middleman in the effort to sell weapons to Iran, have testified that they believed that Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, a central figure in the effort when he was on the staff of the National Security Council at the White House, acted with Reagan’s support.

“Maybe some people were giving the impression that they were acting on orders from me,” the President said. “Well, I wasn’t giving those orders, because no one has asked or had told me what was truly happening there.”

Reagan reiterated the approach taken by others at the White House that the congressional prohibition on U.S. funding for the contras in 1985 and 1986 did not apply to him. Referring to efforts to obtain the funding from individuals outside the government, he said, “We’re talking about a case of people that on their own--individuals and groups in our country--sought to send aid to the freedom fighters.”

He equated such efforts with those who sought assistance for the Lincoln Brigade, which fought on the side opposed to the rebel forces of Gen. Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.

And he said he accepted, as the Administration’s position, Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s statement of support for Assistant Secretary Elliott Abrams. Abrams has been criticized in Congress for failing to report, when questioned, that he had sought a $10-million contribution for the contras from the Sultan of Brunei.