Gorbachev Balks on Summit Date : Demands Curbs on ‘Star Wars’; Missile Treaty’s Fate Uncertain

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev refused to set a date for a summit meeting with President Reagan when Secretary of State George P. Shultz balked at Moscow’s renewed demand for sharp restrictions on the U.S. “Star Wars” space-based missile defense program, Shultz said Friday.

Shultz, looking weary after two days of intensive negotiations which included a 4 1/2-hour face-to-face session with Gorbachev at the Kremlin, quoted the Soviet leader as saying he “did not feel comfortable” coming to Washington as long as there was an unsettled dispute over missile defense programs, specifically the Administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative, as the “Star Wars” program is formally titled.

The snag over SDI and the summit appeared to put on hold a treaty to eliminate all intermediate-range nuclear missiles, those with ranges between 300 to 3,000 miles.

‘Virtually Wrapped Up’

As recently as Thursday, spokesmen for both Shultz and his Soviet counterpart, Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, were saying that the treaty would be completed Friday. But while the two foreign ministers agreed Friday that details of the treaty were “virtually wrapped up,” without a summit there is no forum for a treaty to be signed.

“The issue appears to be whether Gorbachev wants to come to the United States for a summit,” presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said, expressing general White House exasperation. “He has thrown up the SDI roadblock, and we have to wonder if there isn’t some other fear that causes him to raise a false issue. It raises a lot of hard questions about his intentions and purpose.”

Shevardnadze later told a news conference that Gorbachev was still willing to hold a summit with Reagan this year if progress were made on reducing strategic, or long-range, missiles and on space defense issues.

Gorbachev also plans to write to Reagan outlining his latest position, Shevardnadze added. Earlier, Shultz referred to that, saying with a trace of sarcasm that the American side would be waiting for the postman to deliver it.

Serious Problems Feared

U.S. officials voiced fears that Gorbachev’s decision to renew his emphasis on SDI could lead to serious problems. Fitzwater, citing the long-stated U.S. refusal to put its “Star Wars” initiative on the bargaining table at the Geneva arms control negotiations, said: “There’s no issue they know our position better on than SDI.”

In an interview with European reporters Friday, President Reagan remained adamantly opposed to making any concessions on “Star Wars.” Reiterating the stand he took at his press conference Thursday night, he said that “I cannot make that a bargaining chip.”

Nevertheless, Reagan refused publicly to give up hope for a summit, saying the Soviets “have said they want . . such a thing and agreed to it and to be held here in this country, but so far have not set a date. So, I’ll remain hopeful that we can have it.”

However, the failure to name a specific time for the summit strongly indicated there would not be a third Reagan-Gorbachev meeting this year, Western diplomats said.

“On the central problem, we did not achieve any serious progress,” Shevardnadze acknowledged, adding that conflicting views on what research into space defense is allowed by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty were at the heart of the impasse.

Smiling and Joking

Still, Shevardnadze tried to strike an optimistic note at his news conference, smiling and occasionally joking with his questioners. But his top aides wore glum expressions, and he was peppered with questions about why his mid-September agreement with Shultz to name a summit date in Moscow was not being kept.

When Shultz and Shevardnadze met in Washington last month they agreed that Reagan and Gorbachev would hold their third summit meeting sometime this fall and that the date would be set this week in Moscow.

Shultz, plainly disappointed at the outcome of his two-day Moscow visit, flew to Brussels where he plans to brief representatives of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on the latest developments.

“We in the United States--the President--feel very strongly that we must do everything we can to see if we can learn to defend ourselves against ballistic missiles,” Shultz said.

A senior U.S. official, asked later if the Soviets were linking a summit to restrictions on SDI, replied, “At the moment--at the moment.”

Demand for Guarantee

Talking to reporters during the flight to Brussels, Shultz said Gorbachev demanded a guarantee that a summit meeting would produce an agreement in principle on space defense systems.

When Shultz said there could be no such guarantee, Gorbachev said there would be no summit, at least not now.

Shultz said Gorbachev asked him what he thought would happen at a summit and he replied by outlining the “components” of such a meeting as he saw them.

He said Gorbachev then asked, “Would a summit produce agreements on a combination of strategic arms and space defense that would be agreements in principle and negotiators would then work on?”

“I had to say, ‘Well, I can’t guarantee that at all--there is a difference of opinion here.’

“I think that out of this discussion, he said that he wasn’t quite ready, he would have to think about this,” Shultz said.

Progress on Missile Pact

Almost overlooked in the failure to set a summit date was progress which Shultz and Shevardnadze agreed was made on a long-pending treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles and a second treaty to cut long-range weapons, those with ranges over 3,000 miles, by 50%.

Both foreign ministers agreed that the treaty on intermediate-range weapons was almost completed. Shevardnadze, in a rare Moscow news conference by such a Politiburo member, said it might be possible to finish the treaty within two or three weeks of negotiations by experts at Geneva arms talks.

A senior U.S. official said the two sides reached a split-the-difference sort of compromise on the schedule for destruction of missiles.

Washington had demanded that all shorter-range missiles--300 to 600 miles--be dismantled within one year and all medium-range missiles--600 to 3,000 miles--within three years. Moscow responded with a proposal for two years on shorter-range missiles and five years for medium-range weapons.

In the compromise, it was agreed that all shorter-range weapons would be destroyed within 18 months and all medium-range weapons within three years.

Sweetener for Soviets

As a sweetener for the Soviets, the United States agreed to allow Moscow to destroy about a quarter of the rockets by removing the warheads first and then launching them into space, provided this was done in the first six months. The United States had resisted Moscow’s “launch to destroy” plan because it could be used as a training exercise. But the senior official said that if it was limited to six months, the Soviets would get only minimal training value from the launches.

Shultz and Shevardnadze also agreed that the Soviets, who have a far larger arsenal of the intermediate weapons, would destroy their missiles at a much faster pace than the United States during the first phase, a little more than two years. At the end of that period, both sides would have equal numbers of weapons which then would be destroyed on an equal schedule.

They also reaffirmed their agreement last month on the disposition of 72 aging Pershing 1-A missiles owned by West Germany. Bonn has pledged to scrap the missiles by the time the superpowers have eliminated their mid-range missiles. Moscow had indicated that it wanted to reopen that dispute but did not ultimately do so.

Meantime, Shevardnadze disclosed that Gorbachev had suggested new ceilings on the number of warheads for land-based, sea-based and bomber forces as part of a new proposal to reduce strategic arms. Shultz said the new package would be studied by experts, but he expressed no enthusiasm for it, saying that some of Moscow’s new proposals were “totally out of the question.”

U.S. Demand for ‘Sub-Limits’

Shevardnadze said Moscow was willing to accept the U.S. demand for “sub-limits” governing the 6,000 total warheads which both sides earlier fixed as a goal for strategic arms reduction. The Soviet Union had earlier resisted the U.S. plan.

The limits that Shevardnadze spelled out--between 3,000 and 3,300 warheads on land-based missiles, between 1,800 and 2,000 on submarine-launched ballistic missiles and between 800 and 900 carried by bombers--appeared to be similar to the U.S. proposal to allow no more than 4,800 ballistic missile warheads, with no more than 3,300 of those to be land-based.

However, U.S. officials said that without the flexibility posed by the U.S. formulation, the Soviet plan would cripple the U.S. fleet of missile-firing submarines. Each Trident sub carries a total of 240 warheads, 10 on each of 24 missiles, so the Soviet plan would limit the United States to just eight boats, far fewer than Pentagon planners believe are needed.

At his briefing to reporters, Shultz noted that the 1972 ABM treaty calls for reductions in offensive weapons to accompany the sharp restrictions on defensive systems. Instead, he said, offensive arsenals have increased four-fold in the last 15 years.

Higher than Anticipated Levels

Even if all of the arms reduction pacts now on the table were approved, he said, offensive arms levels would remain far ahead of the levels anticipated in 1972.

Dressed in a blue suit which seemed to match his somber mood, Shultz repeated his performance after last year’s summit in Reykjavik, Iceland--first listing the accomplishments of the latest round of meetings, outlining the arms control treaty that was virtually agreed to, but then delivering the unexpected news that the talks had foundered on the issue of space-based missile defenses.

“I had some sense that if we worked at it we could make” a treaty to cut in half the superpower arsenals of long-range strategic weapons, said Shultz. But the secretary of state, who has said that he believes that every problem can be solved if the negotiators only work hard enough, admitted that the gap was so wide on the “Star Wars” issue that agreement was unlikely or even impossible.

Despite almost a year of negotiations since Reagan and Gorbachev met in Iceland, the Soviets have not budged from their insistence that the United States will have to curtail research into “Star Wars” to obtain any sort of agreement on limiting offensive missiles.

For his part, Shevardnadze charged that American negotiators had failed to make “constructive” proposals in the two areas on which a summit was conditioned: progress on reducing offensive arms and strengthening the ABM treaty.

‘Militarization of Space’

In fact, he said, he had the impression the United States was trying to scuttle the ABM treaty and thus “legalize its program for militarization of space. . . . This must not be allowed to happen.”

Shultz did not try to hide his disappointment at the failure to schedule a summit.

“I hope as we complete the INF agreement that we will find a way to get it signed,” Shultz said. U.S. officials had expected Reagan and Gorbachev to sign the treaty at a summit, so as to assure the meeting of a major accomplishment.

Shevardnadze was asked who might sign an INF treaty, and when, if there were no summit. He replied: “We don’t know yet.”

Shultz said he has no plans to seek new meetings with Shevardnadze to try to salvage the situation.

“I don’t think there is anything particular to meet about right away,” he said.