Reagan Presses Bid to Ratify Arms Pact : Enlists Ex-Sen. Tower to Lobby Congress, Meets Bonn Official

President Reagan, stepping up his ratification campaign for the U.S.-Soviet treaty that would eliminate ground-launched medium-range nuclear missiles, prepared Thursday for Senate hearings next week by conferring with two diverse but key allies on arms control issues: West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and former Republican Sen. John G. Tower of Texas.

Reagan enlisted Tower, a former U.S. negotiator at the arms control talks in Geneva, to prevail upon senators not to attach “crippling amendments and reservations” to the pact, which will be sent to the Senate on Monday.

“My reading is that the treaty will be ratified, but I think the principal objective is to head off any congressional action or senatorial action . . . that might require renegotiation,” Tower said.

Conservatives’ Threats

But conservative opponents led by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) renewed their threats to seek significant changes to toughen the U.S. position, which would require renegotiation with the Soviet Union and thus undercut prospects for ratification before Reagan leaves office.

“We would like to have a clean treaty and one that is without amendments,” White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said.

Hearings on the measure begin Monday in the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees.

As Reagan and his lieutenants sought the smoothest course to ratification of the medium-range treaty--with arms control among the chief foreign policy priorities of his final year in office--Reagan met with Genscher to discuss plans for a U.S.-Soviet treaty to halve the superpowers’ arsenals of long-range nuclear weapons.

“I don’t remember a phase when agreement and cohesion in the (Western) alliance has been so strong from the United States to arrive at a disarmament agreement with the Soviet Union,” Genscher said after his 30-minute talk with the President.

Negotiations on the issue are getting under way in Geneva, and U.S. and Soviet officials say they hope that an agreement can be signed at a summit conference of Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Moscow in May or early June.

Genscher said that the medium-range weapons agreement signed Dec. 8 by Reagan and Gorbachev in Washington was “an instrument . . . to increase the security of Europe”--both East and West--and urged ratification “as soon as possible.”

The treaty would eliminate the two nations’ ground-launched nuclear missiles with ranges of 300 to 3,000 miles.

The foreign minister was visiting Washington in his capacity as president of the European Communities.

Bonn ‘Deeply Concerned’

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, met with Genscher and told reporters that West Germany is “obviously deeply concerned” about the balance in Europe of tactical nuclear weapons--those with a range of less than 300 miles.

U.S. officials have said that the medium-range agreement would not necessarily lead to elimination of all nuclear weapons in Europe--reflecting Western concerns about Soviet superiority in conventional forces in the region.

The White House, meanwhile, formally announced that Reagan will take part in a North Atlantic Treaty Organization conference in Brussels on March 2 and 3.

Fitzwater said the President will meet with the heads of the other NATO nations to preview the agenda of the Moscow summit.