Gorbachev Proposes U.N. Summit Linking Aid, Arms

In an unprecedented action, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Tuesday proposed a summit conference of the full U. N. Security Council to discuss the linkage of disarmament and economic development for poor nations.

The Gorbachev initiative was contained in a message presented by Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir F. Petrovsky at a U.N. conference on disarmament and development. The message revived a proposal to create an economic aid fund for developing nations from defense spending cuts by the five permanent members of the Security Council, including the United States.

Such a U.N. summit meeting remains unlikely, however, because Washington is opposed to linking disarmament and development, insisting that they are unrelated issues. The Administration boycotted the current conference on the two issues and criticized the financially strapped United Nations for spending more than $1.2 million to finance it.

Petrovsky indicated that Gorbachev would attend such a U.N. Security Council meeting only if all 15 members of the council agreed to participate. The State Department, which apparently was surprised by the move, issued a statement late Tuesday rejecting the summit proposal.

The State Department, reiterating the view that disarmament and developmental aid are unrelated, said: “We believe arms reductions should be pursued on their own merits to the extent that they lead to greater security and stability through balanced, verifiable agreements.”

“We therefore see no merit in the Soviet proposal for a special, high-level meeting of Security Council members to discuss a concept which is flawed and untenable from the outset,” the statement said.

No Timetable

Gorbachev’s proposal did not include a timetable for the summit meeting. After his summit conference last October with President Reagan in Iceland, Gorbachev committed himself to a visit to the United States but set no date or agenda.

The Times reported last Sunday that Gorbachev was planning to visit U.N. headquarters in New York during the next General Assembly session, which begins Sept. 15, and that this trip would provide the opportunity for a private meeting with Reagan. The Administration and the Soviet Foreign Ministry have denied the report.

No summit conference of the Security Council has ever taken place, although meetings attended by foreign ministers of the member states have occurred on occasion. The five permanent council members are the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, China and France. The other 10 council nations are non-permanent members serving two-year terms: West Germany, Bulgaria, Congo, Italy, Ghana, Zambia, Japan, Argentina, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

The Gorbachev message, delivered during the second day of the disarmament and development conference in New York, urged the highest priorities for the two issues in international debate.

“It would be useful to discuss in principle the problems of disarmament and development at a special meeting of top leaders of member states,” the Soviet leader said. “It would be advisable to set up within the United Nations framework an international fund, ‘Disarmament for Development,’ open to all states with a view to transferring resources that would be released through disarmament to countries in need.”

The State Department scored the “minuscule Soviet contribution” toward aiding the poor nations, citing a 1984 U.N. study showing that 86% of the voluntary contribution to U.N. development operations came from Western sources, 13% from developing nations themselves and only 1% from the Soviet Bloc.