Gorbachev Seeks Early, Top-Level China Talks : Soviet Leader Quoted as Saying He and Deng Should Not Wait to Settle Nations’ Differences

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev said Friday that he is ready to meet with Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in Beijing or Moscow and try to reconcile Sino-Soviet differences.

Gorbachev, who is to confer with President Reagan next month in Washington, said he does not agree with the Chinese view that major problems must be resolved before he and Deng can meet, the official Tass news agency said.

Soviet differences with the United States are much greater than its disputes with China, Gorbachev said, yet this did not stop him from scheduling the third summit meeting with Reagan, set for Dec. 8-10, Tass reported.

“Meetings between statesmen are held precisely to discuss and solve complex issues of bilateral and international relations,” Tass quoted Gorbachev as saying.

He made the comments about China in a conversation at the Kremlin with Zambian President Kenneth D. Kaunda, who was on a working visit to Moscow.

China’s 3 Complaints

In the past, Chinese officials have said the presence of Vietnamese troops in Cambodia, the massing of Soviet troops along the Chinese border and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan were three obstacles to the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations.

China, unlike almost every other Communist country, did not send a party delegation to the 70th anniversary celebrations of the Bolshevik Revolution this month. A delegation from the Soviet-Chinese Friendship Society did come to Moscow, however.

Tass said the Soviet leader called attention to Deng’s reported statement that he was ready to meet with Gorbachev. Deng, who heads the Communist Party’s Military Commission, is considered China’s senior leader, although other men hold the top positions in the party and government.

“We have said more than once that such a meeting also accords with our wish,” Tass quoted Gorbachev as saying. “It could be held in Moscow, Beijing or any other convenient place.” Soviet-Chinese relations are developing, Gorbachev added, and their further improvement would change the international climate for the better.

Preview of Summit

Meantime, the government newspaper Izvestia said Gorbachev’s meeting with Reagan would offer the United States its best chance in decades to improve Soviet-American relations.

The Soviet Union is taking a more realistic view of itself and international relations, the newspaper said in a preview article on the coming Washington summit.

Gorbachev and Reagan will sign a treaty to eliminate ground-launched, intermediate-range nuclear missiles and will discuss guidelines for negotiation of a second treaty to reduce the strategic nuclear arsenal by 50%.

A senior Western diplomat said the detailed provisions for verification contained in the first treaty represent a major advance in arms control for the superpowers.

“This is a step forward toward greater openness in Soviet-American dealings,” the diplomat said. He added that it gives a basis for optimism that further progress will be made on the second agreement.

Krushchev Given Credit

Izvestia said that former Soviet leaders Nikita S. Khrushchev and Leonid I. Brezhnev opened new possibilities for better relations between the two nations when they visited the United States. It blamed unidentified “contradictions” in the American political system for ensuing tensions in the Moscow-Washington relationship.

In a rare departure from the official near-silence about Khrushchev, Izvestia gave sympathetic treatment to his 13-day tour of the United States in 1959.

“An energetic and emotional person, quick to express himself, always ready with a folksy, slightly blue joke, he not only opened America for himself but also (opened) us to Americans,” the newspaper said.