The Washington Summit : Gorbachev Saluted by All 21 Guns

If Ronald Reagan had adhered to protocol as faithfully as he expects the Soviets to abide by the new medium-range missile treaty, Mikhail S. Gorbachev would have received a 17-gun salute when he arrived at the White House on Tuesday morning.

But as the anthem of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics echoed across the graceful south lawn of the White House, and the President and the Soviet Communist Party’s general secretary stood at rigid attention, the ceremonial guns of the famed 3rd U.S. Infantry boomed the full 21 guns reserved for kings and queens and presidents.

Not being head of state, Gorbachev was not--if you want to be sticky about it, entitled to 21--and since he is not officially head of government either, he was not even entitled to 19. But the party chief is the unchallenged leader of a superpower and the author of the glasnost and perestroika reform policies, and so the State Department ordered the military to hold nothing back.

Everyone Came Over

The arrival ceremony was worthy of Buckingham Palace. Ordinarily, the arrival of a visiting government leader finds bureaucrats shooed out of offices to create a crowd. But on Tuesday, elders of Washington’s diplomatic community, presidential candidates and congressional committee chairman crowded before the podium on the South Lawn of the White House where the two leaders exchanged their formal greetings.

Out of camera range, the capital of the United States was not exactly taking the summit in stride.

The city long ago grown blase at the comings and goings of political dignitaries was showing the effects. The security bubble around the Soviet Embassy combined with construction projects to aggravate traffic that is chaotic in the best of times.

And across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, demonstrators congregated in Lafayette Park and railed against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, shouting “Death to Gorbachev--Death, Death, Death,” finally gaining enough attention from the U.S. Park Police to get 15 of them arrested.

Hare Krishnas Dance

As Reagan and Gorbachev settled into their first talk in the Oval Office, slick-headed Hare Krishnas danced and chanted, monks banged on bongo drums, and smaller groups denounced the Soviet presence in Ethiopia, the Crimea and the Caucasus.

In the midst of it all, serenely strolled the Rev. G. Jarvis McMillan of Baltimore. He carried an orange and white umbrella filled with holes the size of a baseball, mocking Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense umbrella. In the other hand, he carried a huge bird cage with a white dove.

Even though the President and the general secretary, who had mistakenly been introduced as the “secretary general” at the White House ceremony, had just sat down to talk, the summit was already a success for McMillan. He had been able, he said, to deliver a mated pair of his white sacred doves, blessed by a variety of clergymen, to the office of White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr.

Mocking the President

Blocks away in front of the National Press Building, a demonstrator made up as Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who tried desperately to appease Adolf Hitler before World War II, and a companion in a Ronald Reagan mask cavorted and mocked the President for agreeing for defense reductions with the Soviet leader.

And at the barriers sealing off the Soviet Embassy, Jewish activists denounced Gorbachev and the Soviet government for refusing to allow the emigration of thousands of refuseniks.

They were vestiges of the throng of 200,000 demonstrators that gathered outside the Capitol on Sunday, and they were not impressed by the signing of the missile treaty Tuesday afternoon.

“Summits are fine,” said Sheila Hoffman, who had come all the way from Colorado to demonstrate against Gorbachev, “but we all know how many treaties they have broken. I wouldn’t marry a guy knowing he’s going to cheat on me the first night.”

By the time the day was over, federal authorities and District of Columbia police had arrested about 30 people, most of them for trying to press too close to the Soviet Embassy or the White House, but for the most part demonstrators were good-natured and considered themselves successful if they were taken into the sights of a television camera.

Others With Priorities

As much as official Washington was swept up in the first U.S.-Soviet summit in Washington in 14 years, there were still to be found men with their own priorities.

One of them was former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, who stepped down as Pentagon chief just three weeks ago. Though out of the Cabinet, and officially retired, he has since taken office space in the Old Executive Office Building to continue lending his old friend and boss a hand when he is needed.

On Tuesday, for the signing of the arms treaty, Weinberger, long the Reagan lieutenant most suspicious of the Soviets, had a special invitation to be on hand. He turned it down, however. He said he had a “prior commitment”--a television interview.