Pact Outcome Up to Soviets, Shultz Declares

Secretary of State George P. Shultz today said it is up to the Soviet Union whether a treaty to cut long-range nuclear weapons in half will be ready for signing at a spring superpower summit in Moscow.

In a major foreign speech, Shultz said it “seems unlikely that the U.S.-Soviet relationship will ever lose what always has been and is today a strongly wary and at times adversarial element.”

President Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev aim to sign the missile treaty at a summit intended to be staged in Moscow, either in late May or in June. The treaty would cut U.S. and Soviet armories of long-range nuclear submarines and bombers and land-based missiles by 50%.

Pledges Hard Work

Shultz said the U.S. side would work hard to get an accord ready. He will meet in Moscow in two weeks with Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze on the treaty, Afghanistan, human rights and other issues.

“Completing a treaty in the next few months,” Shultz said, “will depend greatly on Soviet willingness to work cooperatively and creatively with us,” he said in an address at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.

Shultz said he expects the adversative relationship of the United States with the Soviet Union to continue.

“We must deal with the Soviet Union as it is, not as we wish it to be,” he said. “The Soviet system is just beginning an attempt at economic reform.”

And, Shultz said, “it has barely scratched the surface at structural political reform.”

Shultz said the United States will continue a vigorous program to develop a “Star Wars” space-based missile defense system.