Extra Day or Two Suggested by Soviets : U.S. Cool to Longer Gorbachev Visit

The Reagan Administration threw cold water Friday on a suggestion from Moscow that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev might extend the length of his visit to the United States next month.

In what appeared to be an early round of public relations sparring over how the summit will be perceived, a State Department spokesman said that the United States does not anticipate any change in the existing plans for Gorbachev’s summit meetings with President Reagan. Those plans call for Gorbachev to arrive in Washington on Dec. 7 and to leave Dec. 10.

“We expect it to be a three-day summit,” said Charles Redman, the State Department spokesman. A White House source reacted even more negatively, labeling the hint of a longer stay by Gorbachev an example of “propaganda wars.”

On Thursday, Georgy A. Arbatov, director of the Institute of the United States and Canada of the Academy of Sciences and a senior aide to Gorbachev, told a news conference that Gorbachev’s schedule might permit him to remain in the United States “for an extra day or even two.”

Arbatov said Gorbachev is not coming here “for tourist programs.” However, he went on, the Soviet leader might delay his scheduled departure past Dec. 10 if the United States and the Soviet Union were to get close to an agreement on cutting strategic offensive arms by 50%.

The United States and Soviet Union have already reached agreement on a treaty on ground-launched Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF), which will be signed during the summit. During their meetings, Reagan and Gorbachev are expected to explore the possibility of another agreement paving the way for reductions in long-range missiles.

By raising the possibility of a longer visit, Arbatov may have been seeking to create a climate in which the summit will be perceived as a failure in the United States and Western Europe if Gorbachev leaves after three days with no progress on long-range missiles. The Reagan Administration, by contrast, appeared to be trying to dampen expectations about new breakthroughs at the summit.

Ample Time in Schedule

“Our response (to Arbatov) is that there’s ample time already built into the summit schedule to deal with these issues,” one White House official said Friday. He said he thought Arbatov was merely “blowing smoke.”

Ironically, only a month ago, Reagan was trying to persuade the Soviet leader to come for a longer visit in the United States and Gorbachev was resisting.

At his press conference on Oct. 22, Reagan said he hopes that Gorbachev “would have time to see a great deal of America. . . . I’ve thought it would be kind of nice to invite him up to our 1,500-foot adobe shack that was built in 1872 and let him see how a capitalist spends his holidays.”