Says He, Reagan Charted ‘New Course’ : Adelman Resigns as Head of Arms Control Agency

Kenneth L. Adelman resigned Thursday as director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, saying that he has helped President Reagan “chart a new course . . . that dramatically reduces nuclear weapons.”

Adelman predicted a new U.S.-Soviet arms agreement and summit meeting this year and said he will remain on the job until at least mid-October, or through a summit conference if one is scheduled for later in the year.

In Moscow, a Soviet spokesman said that Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze will be prepared to discuss “prospects for a summit meeting” when he meets with Secretary of State George P. Shultz in mid-September. Earlier, the White House said that Shultz and Shevardnadze would meet here Sept. 15 to 17.

To Join ‘Think Tank’

Adelman, 41, strongly denied any policy differences with the Administration as a reason for his resignation. He said he intends to become affiliated with a policy “think tank” in the Washington area, to write a twice-weekly column for a newspaper syndicate and a monthly magazine article and perhaps would resume teaching Shakespeare at a university.

Although Adelman said he had decided to quit only three days ago, he has been restive as chief of the arms agency for about a year. Two knowledgeable officials said that he unsuccessfully had sought appointment as U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization late last year, although he has denied this.

His departure seems timed to coincide with the only arms control success that the Administration can expect, in his view: a U.S.-Soviet agreement eliminating all intermediate-range nuclear missiles--those with ranges of 300 to 3,000 miles--which probably would be signed at the prospective summit meeting.

Further Deals Held Unlikely

Further arms deals, on strategic offensive arms and space defense weapons, are unlikely before 1989 because “the Soviets show no signs of wanting to move forward on them,” he told a news conference.

After he departs, Adelman will be in a position to offer advice to Republican presidential candidates. He is reportedly considering writing a book on national security with former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a former presidential hopeful once served by Adelman as an aide.

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater told reporters that Adelman had done an outstanding job in guiding the Administration’s arms control efforts. Adelman’s resignation letter to the President arrived Thursday morning, Fitzwater said, and no consideration has yet been given to naming a replacement.

In the letter, Adelman said that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s move last week to accept the so-called “double-zero option”--and thus remove the major roadblock to the intermediate-range missile accord--”was the clearest and latest indication that the Soviets, at long last, have bought onto” a new course in arms control.

“Because of your resolve, we stand on the verge of a new type of arms control,” involving radical reductions of weapons, rather than just putting a ceiling on new growth, he wrote to Reagan. “I could not say that until now.”

‘Coming Up Roses’

“It’s clear things are coming up roses on the best arms control agreement since 1972,” he told reporters later. He credited the expected success to good U.S. proposals and Reagan’s resolve not to change them, despite criticism that the Soviets would never accept them.

Quick-witted and sometimes irreverent, Adelman initially was controversial because of his inexperience and questionable commitment to arms control. He had been deputy ambassador to the United Nations for the first year of the Reagan Administration, where he sometimes earned Soviet enmity.

He was named to the arms control agency post after the White House abruptly fired Eugene V. Rostow, a respected Democratic elder statesman, as director of the agency.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee rejected Adelman’s nomination by a 9-8 vote, charging that he had ridiculed arms control efforts about which he knew little. But the full Senate confirmed him three months later, 57 to 42, after intense Administration lobbying.

Fast Learner

Although he once proposed “arms control by press release” instead of formal treaties, he showed himself over the next 4 1/2 years to be a fast learner and dedicated supporter of Reagan’s military buildup and arms control strategies.

Adelman was eclipsed as the State Department’s chief arms control adviser by Ambassador Paul H. Nitze, but he succeeded in having his agency’s views heard--if not always followed--in Administration deliberations. In addition, he obtained increased budgets and personnel for the agency.

Shultz said in a statement that he was “sorry” to see Adelman go.