Brevity of Parley With De la Madrid Criticized : Reagan Stops in L.A. on Way to Mexico

President Reagan arrived in Los Angeles Friday on his way to a meeting today with Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid in the Mexican resort city of Mazatlan.

Reagan is expected to spend no more than 4 hours in Mexico, and Mexican officials have expressed some irritation at the brief amount of time he is devoting to the visit.

Indeed, Reagan has rarely spent more than a day in Mexico, and on one visit, in 1982, he visited Tijuana for 20 minutes before returning to San Diego to resume conversations there with De la Madrid, then the President-elect.

Preferences of First Lady

Some U.S. officials have attributed the brevity of the visit to preferences expressed by First Lady Nancy Reagan, and the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City was said to have fought unsuccessfully to extend the visit to an overnight stay.

On Friday afternoon, the President and First Lady attended a private $10,000-a-couple Republican fund-raiser at the Bel-Air home of multimillionaire financier and developer David H. Murdock, former finance chairman of the California Republican Party.

With the exception of the 4-hour visit to Mexico, Reagan is spending an extended Washington’s Birthday weekend in California, and he will fly to his ranch near Santa Barbara this evening, planning to stay there until Wednesday morning.

In discussing one of the key issues that will face the President on his return to Washington, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater told reporters that, if the White House is unable to reach an agreement with House Democrats, it will prepare its own package of aid for the anti-Sandinista rebels “in anticipation of the Feb. 29 cutoff” of assistance for the Nicaraguan Contras.

But he said that no decisions have been made on whether a new aid package would contain money for weapons and ammunition--the major elements that drew opposition last week when the House turned down Reagan’s request for $36.25 million in Contra assistance.

Reagan has said in the past--most recently on Thursday in a speech to a conservative political group--that he will continue seeking assistance for the Contras.

On Friday, Fitzwater said: “By the end of February, there will be another aid package before the Congress to consider.”

The Administration has held back in advancing a second proposal, Fitzwater said aboard Air Force One, to see first what assistance effort is made by House Democrats. Some Democrats are seeking to assemble a package of “humanitarian” aid that would exclude money for ammunition and weapons.

In another development, Fitzwater said in a written statement distributed in Los Angeles that the Administration would propose negotiating with the Soviet Union “a step-by-step program--in association with a program to reduce and ultimately eliminate nuclear weapons--of limiting and, ultimately, ending nuclear testing.”

But he said that such a proposal would not be made until the Administration’s concerns about the verification of two existing nuclear test treaties have been satisfied and until the treaties have been ratified.

One of the treaties, the Threshold Test Ban Treaty, which would set a limit of 150 kilotons on the yield of an underground nuclear test, dates to 1974. Negotiations on the second, the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty, were completed in 1976 and would govern the non-military use of nuclear explosions.

Fitzwater’s statement was issued in connection with the resumption Monday of U.S.-Soviet nuclear test limitation talks in Geneva.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Reagan’s press secretary, Elaine Crispen, indicated that the Reagans were making progress toward reaching a final decision on the house they will move into after they leave the White House. The President’s term ends next January.

“It looks like they are narrowing in on it,” she said.

A group of longtime friends of the Reagans has purchased for them a 3-bedroom, 6-bath rambling ranch house situated on 1 acres in Bel-Air. Crispen, indicating the President and Mrs. Reagan would move into the house, has said in the past that the Reagans would repay the group, which bought the property for $2.5 million in the summer of 1986.

Staff writer Dan Williams in Mazatlan contributed to this story.