Missile Pact Nearly Ready: Shevardnadze

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze said today that an agreement with the United States on eliminating medium and shorter-range nuclear missiles is almost complete.

“An agreement on medium-range missiles and operational-tactical (shorter-range) missiles has been almost elaborated,” Shevardnadze told reporters at Geneva airport after he arrived from Moscow. “An historical convention on banning the production of chemical weapons and destroying their stocks is almost ready.

“We have arrived in Geneva in order to help remove this ‘almost,’ and by clarifying the Soviet position and making a number of new Soviet proposals, assist in resolving the tasks faced by the conference on disarmament.”

Shevardnadze plans to meet Thursday with U.S. and Soviet negotiators at major-power space and nuclear arms talks and to address the separate U.N. 40-nation disarmament conference.

Shevardnadze’s trip to Geneva comes nearly two years after the first summit in November, 1985, between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

“After that memorable Geneva summit there was a lot of talk that the hopes it had raised turned out to be unreal,” he said. “Yet today, after two years have passed, we feel again that the Geneva spirit is alive.”