Cut in ICBM Forces Seen in 6 Months : Ebullient Reagan Says ‘Star Wars’ Obstacle Cleared

Top Administration officials, reviewing progress made at the U.S.-Soviet summit that ended here Thursday, expressed optimism Friday that the two superpowers will agree within the next six months on a treaty slashing long-range nuclear missile arsenals in half.

These officials, who have participated at the highest levels in the Geneva arms control negotiations as well as the summit, say that while difficult problems remain, the Washington negotiations brought the two sides into accord on the basic form of a strategic arms reduction treaty.

And although the complexities of the issues have made others skeptical about how quickly final agreement can be reached, the officials said chances now appear good that a treaty can be ready for signing at the fourth summit meeting between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev--expected next May or June in Moscow.

3 Types Covered

The treaty would cover land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles and bombers carrying cruise missiles.

Reagan, clearly savoring his summit success, insisted Friday that the Soviet Union is no longer using its unhappiness with his “Star Wars” anti-missile program to obstruct progress toward a strategic arms reduction treaty--or START, as it is often called.

Declaring that the dispute over “Star Wars”--formally known as the Strategic Defense Initiative--was not simply sidestepped but “eliminated,” the President declared, “I don’t think there’s any impediment there at all.”

Other Administration officials, including Secretary of State George P. Shultz, cautioned that--as they understand the accommodation between the two sides on “Star Wars”--the Soviets remain free to raise the issue again as an obstacle to a START accord.

Yet that view did nothing to dampen the euphoria that prevailed at the White House on the morning after the superpower summit.

Shortly after he arrived for work in the Oval Office, sources said, the President received confidential polling data showing that his approval rating, which sank sharply a year ago during the Iran-Contra affair, had risen to 61%.

In addition, Reagan was applauded enthusiastically by leaders in Congress during an early morning White House meeting that stood in stark contrast to the many bitter confrontations of recent months between the President and congressional leaders.

Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) described it as “sort of a love feast.” House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.), a frequent critic of the President, called it “the most genuinely upbeat meeting at the White House in many months” and praised Reagan and his negotiators for doing “a splendid job.”

Among the Administration officials who voiced optimism about the prospects for a START agreement was Shultz, who spoke with reporters on his flight from Washington to Brussels to brief Nort1746944372the summit.

The summit, Shultz said, “advances things very considerably.” Referring to the joint statement issued by the United States and the Soviet Union, he said: “You can literally see from this document the shape of a START agreement.”

Other Optimistic Voices

Three other high-ranking Administration officials, who asked that their names not be used, also voiced optimism about the prospects of a START accord before the next Reagan-Gorbachev summit.

“On a scale of 1 to 10,” one of the officials said, “we achieved pretty close to 10 on what we thought we could get.”

Reagan and Gorbachev agreed at their first summit two years ago to the goal of slashing the two sides’ long-range nuclear weapons in half, and negotiations have been under way ever since in Geneva. At the just-concluded summit, the two leaders made progress on a formula for reaching their goal.

Just as important, they agreed to put aside, at least temporarily, their dispute over “Star Wars,” which had left them deadlocked at the end of their second summit last year in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Reagan and Gorbachev instructed their negotiators in Geneva to work toward a new formulation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which, in the Soviets’ view but not the Reagan Administration’s, restricts “Star Wars” testing. The summit’s joint statement allows testing to proceed for now; a key question for the Geneva negotiators will be whether a new ABM treaty would be more restrictive.

Not everyone inside the Administration expects a START treaty to be ready for a Moscow summit next spring.

‘A Herculean Effort’

“It would take a Herculean effort to get anywhere close to completion of the treaty by May,” said Kenneth L. Adelman, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. The difficulties of guaranteeing that each side was complying with such a treaty are enormous, Adelman said, “and I don’t think they can do it.”

But Shultz, at a press conference in Brussels, said that Reagan has enough time left both to negotiate and obtain Senate ratification of a START accord before he leaves office 13 months from now.

“The people who negotiate a treaty should stand up for it--should be its advocates,” he said. Assuming a START treaty is ready to be signed at an early summer summit meeting, he said, “then there is time for ratification.”

Shultz, who met with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze four times in less than three months to complete the treaty signed Tuesday by Reagan and Gorbachev to ban ground-launched medium-range missiles, said he expects to begin a new series of marathon meetings with Shevardnadze in late February on the START pact. He predicted at least three full-scale meetings between the two during the next few months.

‘A Good Shot’ at Treaty

Concurring with Shultz, another top Administration official said that Reagan now has “a good shot” at signing a treaty in Moscow.

A second added: “We have most of the basic elements we need to write that treaty. . . . We are light years from where we were 18 months ago.”

And a senior Reagan aide said: “The President’s goal is to get the treaty. That’s what everybody would like to happen and that’s the way we’re headed, even though there’s a lot of work to be done in Geneva.”

Many experts outside the Administration remained more skeptical.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, said a treaty next year was “certainly a possibility.” But he said negotiators would have to surmount difficult hurdles involving “Star Wars,” the verification of compliance with a START treaty and the danger that would confront the United States if the Soviet Union cheated and maintained more long-range weapons than the treaty allowed.

Fear of Concessions

Richard N. Perle, a hard-liner on Soviet policy as a former assistant secretary of defense, expressed concern that the Administration would push so hard to reach agreement before a Moscow summit that its negotiators would “risk making concessions that just are not in our interest.”

Among the members of Congress who met with Reagan on Friday, the biggest unanswered question was what impact the accord between Reagan and Gorbachev would have on Administration efforts to proceed with testing of “Star Wars.”

Their agreement provided that both sides would continue to abide by the ABM treaty for a period of years to be determined at the Geneva arms negotiations. The U.S. position is that the ABM treaty should remain in force through 1994; the Soviets want to keep it in place for 10 years.

Regardless of the period of years, Reagan indicated that the United States would maintain its position that the ABM treaty does not restrict testing of “Star Wars” components.

“As a matter of fact, by agreement, we will go forward with our research and development of SDI completely with whatever is needed in that development,” he said.

Soviet View on Linkage

Although White House officials endorsed Reagan’s view, Shultz told reporters in Brussels that the issue was not resolved for all time and that the Soviets reserved the right to link strategic arms cuts to limitations on “Star Wars.”

“The Soviets have taken the position that there is a link,” he said.

And the senior Administration officials who foresaw a “good shot” at signing a START accord also said that the two sides would first have to resolve the knotty issue of how much flexibility the ABM treaty left the United States to test “Star Wars” components.

He said that the two sides would have to devise language allowing the Soviets some kind of constraint on U.S. space defenses and at the same time permitting the United States to move its “Star Wars” program forward.

Times staff writers Sara Fritz, Robert C. Toth, Norman Kempster, William J. Eaton, James Gerstenzang and Melissa Healy contributed to this story.