Moscow Must Change Ways for Normal Relationship--Reagan : Again Calls on Senate to Ratify Nuclear Treaty

President Reagan, five weeks before meeting with Mikhail S. Gorbachev, said today that the United States and the Soviet Union cannot have “a normal relationship” unless Moscow changes its ways and stops interfering in nations such as Afghanistan.

Reagan, in a wide-ranging speech on U.S.-Soviet ties, listed a variety of concerns for both superpowers, including arms control, the famine ravaging Ethiopia and the peace process in Central America.

On arms control, the President urged the Senate to ratify the treaty banning medium-range nuclear missiles, signed at the last U.S.-Soviet summit, before he and Gorbachev meet May 29 in Moscow.

May 9 in Senate

He spoke hours after Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd said the Senate won’t rush to ratify the treaty despite White House pressure to do so by the summit.

The treaty is not scheduled to go to the Senate floor until May 9.

Later, in a question-and-answer session with his audience at the World Affairs Council meeting, Reagan said it would be “very upsetting and would put a strain on the summit if the Senate has not ratified the treaty by the time we go” to Moscow.

“We hope and pray that they will, but their scheduling of it has been such that I am very concerned we may have to go without having had it ratified,” he said.

But, Reagan added, “We don’t want a fast treaty. We want a good one.”

Not a Time to Relax

As for relations with a nation Reagan once labeled “the evil empire,” he said in his speech that “the next few months will be no time for complacency, no time to sit back and congratulate ourselves.”

The President said the Soviet Union can build trust only when it stops interfering in other nations and improves its record on human rights.

“Our policy is intended to nurture what you might call more normal relations between East and West,” Reagan said.

He said that a Soviet Union that tramples on the rights of its own people “can never have truly normal relations with the United States and the rest of the free world.

“Neither can a Soviet Union that is always trying to push its way into other countries ever have a normal relationship with us.”

‘Realistic Engagement’

Taking a positive note, Reagan said U.S.-Soviet relations “have taken a dramatic turn into a period of realistic engagement. . . . The INF treaty is now a reality and now the Senate should give its consent to ratification.”

He added that progress has been made on limiting strategic weapons as well.

But Reagan warned that on regional issues, such as Afghanistan, he wants to see deeds, not just words.

“They have often promised to leave (a country), but rarely in their history, and then only under pressure from the West, have they actually done it,” Reagan said. He added that the United States believes that the Soviets “still hope to prop up their discredited, doomed puppet regime (in Kabul), and they still seek to pose a threat to neighboring Pakistan, to whom we have a longstanding defense commitment.”