Summit to Focus on a Second Pact : Chief Topic to Be 50% Slash in Strategic Arms

On the eve of their three-day summit conference here, President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev are focusing on an arms control agreement far more ambitious than the historic treaty they are prepared to sign Tuesday eliminating all medium-range nuclear missiles.

Both superpower leaders, American officials say, are determined to seek agreement on the outlines of a strategic arms, or START, treaty that would slash by 50% their countries’ arsenals of long-range intercontinental missiles--the most powerful and menacing of all nuclear weapons.

“They’ll be discussing START most of the time. That’s what this summit’s mostly about, and that’s why the signing of the INF (intermediate-range nuclear forces, as the medium-range weapons are called) treaty was scheduled for the first day of the summit,” a senior Administration official said.

‘Won’t Back Away’

“The President won’t back away from bringing up human rights and other issues, such as the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, but that won’t sour the summit,” he said. “The President and Gorbachev both are determined to try to reach an agreement on START.”

And the two leaders’ determination to make progress on START reflects their overarching aim: to achieve a greater degree of stability in the relationship between the superpowers, according to senior U.S. officials.

“We are entering the fourth major period (since World War II) in which some progress toward settling our rivalry with the Soviet Union is possible,” William G. Hyland, a senior national security aide in the Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford administrations and now editor of Foreign Affairs, wrote recently. The first such opportunity occurred after Stalin’s death in 1953, the second after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the third during the detente period of 1969-72.

Each yielded some progress, Hyland said, but in the end each failed. “It is this inability to stabilize the relationship that is dangerous,” Hyland said, because each irritant pushes the two nations toward confrontation--and each confrontation carries the peril of conflict.

Thus, continued progress on arms control--in this case, a START agreement--has become a kind of litmus test for progress toward the larger goal of increasing the stability and safety of each side.

It was just this goal that Reagan emphasized in his Saturday radio address. Referring to the INF treaty, the President said: “We must also recognize our obligation to ensure the peace, in particular to search for areas where America and the Soviet Union can act together to reduce the risk of war. This summit meeting and treaty represent . . . steps taken together to ensure the peace.”

As far as START is concerned, the most optimistic officials in the Administration suggest that such a pact could be completed in time for signing at another summit in Moscow next spring or summer, though other government analysts say the technical, diplomatic and political issues raised by START are so vast that completing an agreement so quickly will be very difficult.

While the superpowers appear close to agreement on START, with both Reagan and Gorbachev accepting a once-unimaginable 50% reduction in total strategic weapons, two major difficulties lie just below the surface:

- The Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars,” anti-missile defense system that Reagan is determined to develop. While Moscow has indicated some flexibility, U.S. analysts say it is still unwilling to make drastic cuts in strategic weapons without some assurance that this country will not suddenly deploy a shield against the reduced Soviet force.

- The so-called sublimits question. Though the two sides agree on the total reduction, over the years they have put their nuclear eggs in very different sets of baskets; Moscow has leaned heavily on huge land-based missiles, while the United States has a more diversified arsenal, with greater reliance on nuclear-armed submarines, bombers and cruise missiles. The two sides have still not agreed on how many of each kind of weapon to eliminate.

A decision on this mix, whatever it should turn out to be, would have enormous military, political and even economic consequences in the near and long term.

Beyond the challenges posed by the issues themselves, prospects for a breakthrough on START are further clouded by the climate in which Reagan--and Gorbachev--must negotiate. The third summit meeting between the two, an on-again-off-again event for the past year, comes at a time when festering problems at home appear to limit their freedom to maneuver in foreign affairs.

Damaging Blows

For Reagan, the stock market crash and the Iran-Contra scandal inflicted damaging blows. And the clamorous opposition to the INF treaty among some of his right-wing supporters has created additional problems, just as Gorbachev has suffered a setback from the sudden dismissal of an outspoken champion of his reform programs in Moscow.

“Each man wants some deal very much,” in the view of Harold Brown, secretary of defense in the Jimmy Carter Administration, “but each also wants to avoid looking weak.” These twin aims will make compromise difficult and will create the potential of unpredictability at the summit, he said.

With this array of difficulties, Administration analysts agree that the odds are long against a dramatic breakthrough on START.

Nonetheless, Reagan is considered so determined to press forward that he will go to great lengths--short of a step such as abandoning SDI--to avoid failure at the summit.

At least since the Reykjavik, Iceland, summit talks collapsed on Oct. 12, 1986--after Reagan and Gorbachev came close to agreeing that all offensive weapons in both superpowers’ arsenals should be eliminated--the President has held to what one aide called “a dream” that he might one day help bring about a world free of nuclear weapons.

The President wants a START treaty “badly enough,” for example, to push for an agreement despite increasing opposition from the Republican Party’s right wing and deep skepticism among some of his own advisers that there is enough time between now and a spring or summer Moscow summit to work out such complicated issues, according to Kenneth L. Adelman, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Even Adelman, who plans to return to private life after the Washington summit, seriously doubts that there is enough time to negotiate a START agreement in time for signing at a Moscow summit. But he says Reagan feels strongly about making the effort.

Moreover, he says, the Soviets want the treaty “very badly” and are even more insistent on scheduling another summit in Moscow next year--regardless of progress on START--in hopes of ushering in a new era of detente and locking in arms control as the centerpiece of U.S.-Soviet relations.

A senior White House official who declined to be identified said that while Reagan is optimistic about making progress on START negotiations, he “recognizes there may not be enough time to get it done and that we shouldn’t set an arbitrary summit date and let it drive a treaty decision. The President’s position is that scheduling another summit doesn’t depend on START.”

On the other hand, the official said, Reagan, because of his years of anti-Soviet rhetoric and his reputation as an anti-Communist, “is in a better position than anybody else to take the next step forward in reducing nuclear arms.”

Signing Set for Tuesday

The INF treaty itself, which is scheduled to be signed Tuesday after six years of negotiations, represents a highly significant achievement for a staunchly conservative President who entered the Oval Office almost seven years ago so distrustful of the Soviets that some of his own aides doubted that he would ever agree to any arms control treaty.

But while the INF treaty is an important step, the short-range and medium-range missiles that will be destroyed under its terms make up only about 4% of the superpowers’ total nuclear arsenals. And, with firing ranges of only 300 miles to 3,000 miles, they represent no direct threat to the continental United States.

A START agreement on a 50% reduction, on the other hand, could dramatically curb the direct threat to the United States and set in motion a process of profound change.

Gorbachev, who has established a reputation as a risk taker inclined to bold strokes, made several major concessions in order to reach the INF agreement. Now, American officials say, he is even more eager than Reagan to get on with a START agreement.

“He’s impatient for results,” said one government expert on Soviet affairs. “His larger objective is clearly not INF, and he doesn’t want to wait two years for the next Administration to figure out what it wants to do on these issues. And only if the next President were (Vice President) George Bush might he have any confidence that the existing agenda will be in the next agenda.”

New Flexibility

The Soviets already have proved to be much more flexible on the issue that caused the collapse of the Reykjavik summit--their demand that the United States stop all testing of SDI.

Gorbachev recently acknowledged that the Soviets also are doing research on such a system and said the Soviets’ position on SDI is that the United States should abide by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Although there are differing interpretations of the treaty’s provisions, it does not prohibit research, but it does forbid deployment of missile defenses except around one site in each of the two countries.

Said an American official: “They have been talking much more sanely about their ability to deal with this then they used to be. They seem less threatened by it, but they clearly want a handle on it.”

Despite Gorbachev’s background as a risk taker who surprised Reagan with his proposals for deep cuts in the nuclear arsenals during the Reykjavik summit, the official said he seriously doubts that the Soviet leader will spring any such surprises at the Washington summit.

“I think his strategy at this summit is minimizing his risks, not maximizing them,” the official said. “I think he wants a summit that very much comes out looking successful--which means you get the agreement that is in hand and that you appear to be moving the other parts of the agenda forward.”

Several Fronts

In the event Gorbachev does attempt to steal a public relations beat by springing a surprise at the summit, Administration officials say, he could announce a move on one of several fronts, including withdrawal of some Soviet forces from Eastern Europe, a partial withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan, or he could agree to sign a long-term grain deal with the United States, which the Soviets recently refused to do.

Barring such surprises, which would disrupt and might even risk collapse of the summit, “a new political climate” in U.S.-Soviet relations will be formally recognized this week with the signing of the medium-range missile agreement.

Beyond arms control, there are hopes for further signs of the Soviets’ expressed wish to withdraw some of their 115,000 men from Afghanistan after eight years of occupation, but still no solution to the more difficult issue of the composition of the regime to be left behind in Kabul.

Reagan said he would “also say it’s time for them to leave Cambodia, Ethiopia, Angola and Nicaragua,” ticking off the prime subjects on the agenda of regional matters to be discussed.

Human rights and bilateral U.S.-Soviet issues will also be discussed, but neither are expected to produce dramatic results.

This traditional four-part agenda does not encompass the full range of subjects to be covered. Some will be less than momentous, such as whether the Soviets will agree to a statement committing themselves to attend the Olympic Games next year in Seoul, South Korea, despite the election turmoil in that country.

In the main, positions on all these issues arise from considerations of broad national self-interest, but in the unusual atmosphere created by summit meetings, personalities can also play important roles.

“The chemistry between the two men is pretty good,” said another senior official with firsthand knowledge from both earlier summits. “It’s not warm and cuddly, but they respect each other.”