White House Strikes Back Sharply at Gorbachev Blast

The White House accused the Kremlin today of responding in a “needlessly inflammatory” manner to criticism from President Reagan of Soviet domestic and foreign policies in advance of the Moscow summit.

As the pre-summit rhetoric began to flare, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater reacted in kind to sharp words from Moscow, saying Reagan “obviously struck a raw nerve” last week in challenging the Soviet Union’s intentions abroad and its human rights policies at home.

But Fitzwater also defended Reagan’s remarks as “consistent with his previous statements” and said he will not be deterred from continuing “to point out problems as well as positive developments in our relationship.”

Harsh Response Regretted

“I don’t regret that it struck a raw nerve,” Fitzwater said of the speech Reagan delivered Thursday in Springfield, Mass., “but I regret that it’s caused this kind of personal feelings and trading of harsh language.”

In the speech, Reagan turned up the heat on Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and on Soviet adventurism and human rights in both a prelude to the summit and an exercise in toughness before hard-line conservatives who feel Reagan has grown too conciliatory toward the Soviets.

The next day, during a meeting with Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Gorbachev warned in remarks carried by the official Soviet press agency Tass that a “confrontational” tone from Washington could jeopardize better U.S.-Soviet relations.

Gorbachev ‘Overreacted’

Shultz later said Gorbachev “overreacted” to the speech, in which Reagan also said “a turning point in the history of East-West relations” could be at hand if Gorbachev curbs Soviet intervention in such trouble spots as Afghanistan and Nicaragua and pursues a domestic policy of political and economic liberalization.

Nonetheless, the White House showed little reluctance to react sharply to Gorbachev, rather than lower the temperature of the pre-summit rhetoric. Fitzwater asserted Reagan’s right “to be realistic in his approach” to U.S.-Soviet relations in the weeks leading up to his meeting with Gorbachev.

“The very harsh rhetoric used by Tass to describe the President’s speech is most unfortunate,” Fitzwater said. “We trust it does not signal a move away from the steadily improving relations that the Soviet Union has espoused in its recent past.

“It seemed to not fit the situation,” he added, “and it seemed needlessly inflammatory in this case.”

Play to Two Audiences

The tone of the Reagan speech last week and the nature of the Gorbachev response reported by Tass reflected the dual audiences to which both leaders must play before their May 29-June 2 summit in Moscow.