Gorbachev Briefs Allies, Returns Home

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev returned to Moscow on Friday night after a triumphal stopover in East Berlin to brief members of the Warsaw Pact on the results of his meetings with President Reagan in Washington.

A statement issued in East Berlin said the East Bloc leaders “wholeheartedly supported” the treaty signed in Washington that calls for the elimination of all U.S. and Soviet ground-launched intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

The statement added, however, that the bloc leaders emphasized that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization must not make up for scrapped weapons by improving others.

Gorbachev was reported to have arrived for the two-hour meeting in East Berlin looking fresh after an overnight flight from Washington.

News services reported that Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, received a tumultuous welcome from thousands of East Berliners along their motorcade from Schoenefeld Airport to the center of the city. At one point, a crowd pushed past police lines and surrounded their limousine as it slowed, with Gorbachev smiling and waving to the well-wishers.

Walking Hand in Hand

After a luncheon with the East Bloc leaders, Gorbachev and his wife walked hand in hand to a waiting crowd and exchanged handshakes and greetings.

“I’ve been watching these things for years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” a middle-aged man was quoted as saying.

According to Tass, the Soviet news agency, Gorbachev told the East European leaders that the intermediate-range missile treaty is “one of the most important global events of contemporary times.”

“There has scarcely been an event since World War II,” he was quoted as saying, “that has met with so much good will in the world and kindled so much hope for the future.”

Tass said the Warsaw Pact countries--East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria in addition to the Soviet Union--praised the agreement.

The statement issued in East Berlin emphasized that the United States and Soviet Union “had agreed in principle” to reduce long-range strategic missiles. It said that observing the provisions of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is “of paramount importance.”

Strategic Arms Pact ‘Possible’

The Warsaw Pact leaders agreed that an accord on reducing strategic missiles “is possible, even in the near future.” They said such an accord would be “a breakthrough in the cause of disarmament and the cause of establishing a nuclear weapons-free and nonviolent world.”

They expressed support for other projected steps, the statement said, among them “the prohibition and elimination of chemical weapons, the termination of nuclear tests, and the reduction of armed forces and conventional armaments in Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals.”

On the subject of conventional arms--NATO officials say the East Bloc has a decided advantage in this field--the statement said that East Bloc leaders affirmed “their readiness to adhere to limits of sufficiency essential to defense, to solve the problem of asymmetries and imbalances in individual types of weapons by means of reducing weapons of the side that is ahead.”

It said they are concerned, however, about reports that the NATO powers may try to increase or modernize existing armaments in order to compensate for the loss of the intermediate-range missiles.

The statement referred to “the constructive stand” of East Germany and Czechoslovakia, which it said have “expressed the readiness to assist the implementation of those provisions of the Washington treaty that apply to those states.”

Delight in East Berlin, Prague

According to diplomatic observers here, this means that East German leader Erich Honecker and President Gustav Husak of Czechoslovakia are delighted--as was the crowd that greeted the Gorbachevs--at the prospect of ridding their countries of Soviet medium-range nuclear missiles. At a lunch for the group, Honecker said that as far as Europe is concerned, the emphasis on disarmament will now shift to the effort to reduce conventional arms.

“It is in the logic of things,” he said, “that after the disappearance of Soviet and U.S. medium-range missiles, conventional disarmament will come to the fore of European security.”

East Germany and Czechoslovakia signed an agreement that permits Western inspection teams to visit Soviet medium-range missile sites in the two countries before the missiles are withdrawn.