U.S. Castigates Kremlin Over Reply to Reagan

One month before President Reagan’s summit in Moscow, his spokesman Monday castigated the Kremlin’s “needlessly inflammatory” response to Reagan’s speech last week criticizing Soviet policy in Afghanistan.

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

Reading from a prepared statement, Fitzwater told reporters that Reagan’s speech “obviously struck a raw nerve” with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. He maintained that nothing Reagan said departed from previous policy.

‘Realistic Approach’

The President, Fitzwater promised, “will continue to be realistic in his approach to dealing with the Soviet Union.” He explained that Reagan “will continue to point out problems, as well as positive developments in our relationship.”

Another Administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the Soviets were engaging in pre-summit posturing--”the old cat-and-mouse type of thing”--prompted to some extent by Gorbachev’s own domestic concerns stemming from a senior colleague’s challenge and a stagnant economy.

Gorbachev, at the end of two days of meetings with Secretary of State George P. Shultz, made a bitter verbal attack last Friday on Reagan’s “confrontational” approach to U.S.-Soviet relations, according to an account by Tass, the Soviet news agency.

“We have so far been showing restraint,” Gorbachev was quoted as saying. “But if we do reciprocate--and we can do so over a very wide range of issues--the atmosphere in Soviet-American relations can become such as will make it no longer possible to solve any further issues.”

Shultz told reporters the next day that it would be a “total misreading” of Gorbachev’s remarks to see a crisis in U.S.-Soviet relations or bad blood between the summit leaders.

Gorbachev’s remarks to Shultz followed by one day a speech in which Reagan expressed skepticism about the Soviets’ planned withdrawal of their 115,000 troops from Afghanistan between May and December of this year. Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Soviet Union and the United States signed an accord April 14 spelling out that timetable.

Reagan, addressing the World Affairs Council of Western Massachusetts in Springfield, Mass., said that the Soviets had often promised to withdraw from “occupied” nations, “but rarely in their history, and then only under pressure from the West, have they actually done it.” He also expressed skepticism about the Soviets’ motives for promising the Afghan withdrawal.

Reagan’s Warning

Referring to Soviet support for leftist regimes in Angola, Ethiopia and Nicaragua, Reagan warned that “spreading violence on the part of the Soviets or their puppets” could undo the accomplishments of the Afghan accord.

The verbal volleys between Washington and Moscow come at a time when officials here are conceding that the two sides will be unable to reach agreement on a treaty cutting in half the superpowers’ arsenals of long-range nuclear weapons, the goal of continuing negotiations in Geneva.

Further, Gorbachev’s leadership appears to be coming under increasing challenge at home.

There were indications in Moscow last week that he had moved against Communist Party ideological chief Yegor K. Ligachev, considered the No. 2 man in the Soviet hierarchy, after repeated reports of clashes between the two. And on Sunday, U.S. intelligence agencies reported that the Soviet economy went into a slump last year and that the short-term prospects for renewed growth are not favorable.

The anonymous Administration official said that Gorbachev’s “verbal barrage” delivered to Shultz last Friday reflected a decision “to up the ante.”

The official said that Gorbachev unleashed his attack even though “on a substantive level things are moving forward and on a logistical level things are moving forward” in preparation for the summit.