Reagan, Gorbachev to Meet in Fall to Sign Arms Pact

President Reagan, trumpeting a long-awaited breakthrough in arms talks, announced an “agreement in principle” today to ban all U.S. and Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles, setting the stage for the first superpower summit in America in 14 years this fall.

It would be the first nuclear arms pact in Reagan’s presidency and the first ever to ban an entire class of nuclear weapons.

The tentative pact was thrashed out in three days of intensive talks between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

Shevardnadze called it “a common success for all mankind, for all civilization.” Shultz said it was “an important beginning” in arms control.

Reagan, in a nationally broadcast announcement, said Shultz will meet with Shevardnadze in Moscow next month to set an agenda and date for a summit “later this fall” with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Reagan and Shultz said the meeting will be held in the United States, in line with the 1985 understanding between the President and Gorbachev to hold summits in the United States one year and in the Soviet Union the next.

The last summit in the United States was in 1973, when Leonid I. Brezhnev met with President Richard M. Nixon.

Announcing the tentative accord, Reagan said, “I’m pleased to note that an agreement in principle was reached to conclude an INF (intermediate nuclear forces) treaty.”

Reagan, during a brief appearance in the White House press room, rejected any suggestion he was in a rush to see Gorbachev again or to nail down an arms treaty. “I don’t know anything in my life I’ve waited over six years for,” he said with a chuckle.

He said the treaty ‘pretty much” followed the formula he outlined in November, 1981, when he originally proposed eliminating intermediate-range missiles.

Asked by reporters if he still considered the Kremlin “an evil empire”--a view he voiced four years ago--Reagan said, “I don’t think it’s still lily white.”

The pact would impose a worldwide ban on American and Soviet missiles with ranges from 315 miles to 3,125 miles.

The Soviets would scrap 462 rockets aimed at Western Europe and 221 targeted on China and Japan. On the U.S. side, 332 ballistic and ground-launched cruise missiles would be withdrawn from Britain, Italy, West Germany and Belgium.

Shevardnadze, at a news conference at the Soviet Embassy shortly after Reagan’s announcement, noted that his talks with Shultz had lasted hours longer than planned. “The road to an agreement . . . turned out to be more difficult than anyone had thought,” he said.

The Soviet official said that during the talks, both sides “experienced a complex spectrum of emotions, from anxiety to a strong emotional uplift. The day before yesterday, I said to Secretary Shultz that it is time to bring in the harvest. And he agreed.”

Shevardnadze said that by year’s end, “both we and our American partners have confidence the treaty will be signed.”