Airports Fogged In for 3rd Straight Day : Shultz Rides Rails to Moscow for Talks

Secretary of State George P. Shultz took a night train today after becoming one of thousands of travelers unable to reach Moscow by air because of heavy fog that shrouded the Soviet capital for the third straight day, closing down its three airports.

Shultz and his entourage instead boarded a specially outfitted train for the trip of 12 hours or more.

“It’s an interesting way,” Shultz said at a news conference in the Finnish capital before boarding the train bound for Moscow via Leningrad. “We see a little more of the country.”

Shultz said he is confident of making progress on arms control in talks with Soviet officials but did not guarantee he could set a date for the next superpower summit meeting.

Shultz, agreeing with the Soviet position, said summits should “produce substantive results.” But he said he and his team of experts were bound for Moscow in “a very serious frame of mind.”

Shultz seeks to overcome remaining hurdles to an agreement to ban U.S. and Soviet intermediate range nuclear missiles and to make a stab at cutting longer-range weapons arsenals by 50%.

“I’m sure we’ll make headway in the field of arms control,” Shultz said. “It’s only a question of how much.”

He shied away, however, from predicting a date would be set for Kremlin leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to go to Washington for a third meeting with President Reagan.

The two sides agreed last month that the summit would be held some time in the fall, but the Soviets did not suggest a specific date and the Americans did not press them.

Since then, on top of such unsettled issues as a schedule for dismantling their medium-range missiles and measures to guard against cheating, the Soviets revived a demand to include 72 U.S. nuclear warheads for West German Pershing 1A missiles. But Shultz said “we believe that’s a solvable issue.”

The talks are to begin Thursday when Shultz meets Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze. He is scheduled to see Gorbachev on Friday.