Hopes for 50% Cut in Strategic Arms : Gorbachev to Seek a Joint U.S.-Soviet Mars Mission

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev will ask President Reagan to approve a joint Soviet-U.S. unmanned flight to Mars as the symbol of an ambitious new era of superpower cooperation on Earth and in space when the two meet at the Moscow summit later this month.

In an extended interview here, Gorbachev also expressed hope that he and Reagan will be able to sign an agreement before the President leaves office early next year that would require the superpowers to cut their strategic nuclear arsenals by 50%.

“I would certainly welcome that,” the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party said, strongly implying that he is willing to meet Reagan in a fifth summit to sign a new arms control accord even if it has to be left for Reagan’s successor to send it to the Senate for ratification.

Gorbachev rebuffed informal U.S. suggestions that some key disputes be set aside temporarily to permit the strategic arms treaty to be completed and signed, saying it would be “senseless” to cut “strategic offensive forces in one area and at the same time launch an arms race in space or at sea.”

He combined praise for Reagan and the “progress” they have made together on arms control with firm declarations that he is ready to continue the new era of “very productive dialogue” with the next U.S. president. Joint space research, he suggested, would help extend the current friendly phase far into the future.

“The winds of the Cold War are being replaced by the winds of hope,” Gorbachev declared at one point. “Let us cooperate to master the cosmos, to fulfill big programs . . . worthy of the Soviet and American people,” he added later as he disclosed the Mars rocket proposal he will make to Reagan at their forthcoming summit.

The Soviet leader, 57, is a man of medium height, friendly brown eyes that draw and keep the gaze of a visitor, and conspicuous neatness. He conducted the 90-minute interview without reference to notes and with one aide, who took notes.

Flashes of Exuberance

Showing occasional flashes of the exuberance and charm that have made him a well-known figure around the world, Gorbachev sought in the interview to create a positive tone for the May 29-June 2 visit by Reagan, who Gorbachev indicated had surprised and impressed him.

“Who would have thought in the early ‘80s . . . that it would be President Reagan who would sign with us the first nuclear arms reduction treaty in history?” Gorbachev said in a statement praising Reagan’s “realism” and his willingness to “take a fresh look at the existing realities, while holding to his well-known convictions.”

Toying with his eyeglass case in the opening minutes of the interview but quickly putting it aside as he took control of the meeting, Gorbachev displayed a lively, engaged intellect as he threaded his way through questions on Eastern Europe, economic reform, human rights and other topics.

Raisa Absent

He invoked the biblical story of Jesus feeding the multitudes with five loaves of bread to make the point that he, like other mortals, could not perform miracles. He referred to Greek philosophy, quoted Friedrich Engels’ remark that “a woman is an entire civilization,” and jokingly apologized for the absence of his wife, Raisa, saying with a laugh, “She is not an easily manageable person.”

As he spoke of preparations for the first U.S.-Soviet summit in Moscow in 14 years, enthusiasm infused his soft baritone voice. But his mood shaded into sober reflection and deliberation when the Soviet leader was questioned about his turbulent domestic political scene.

He likened the heated debates that have erupted around his program of perestroika, or economic and political restructuring, to “a turbulent sea in which it is not easy to sail the ship, but we have a compass and we have a crew to guide that ship. And the ship itself is strong.”

Fifth-Floor Office

The conversation between Gorbachev and Katharine Graham, chairman of the board of the Washington Post Co. and four senior editors from the Washington Post and Newsweek magazine was conducted Wednesday in his spacious fifth-floor office in the Communist Party Central Committee headquarters.

His remarks, delivered in Russian and translated by the Washington Post, were supplemented by written answers to questions submitted in March at the request of Soviet officials. The written text dealt largely with foreign policy questions, while Wednesday’s conversation was dominated by questions about domestic affairs.

Among other points made by Gorbachev were:

-- The Soviet Union will help Afghanistan “in dealing with the consequences of the war, in strengthening the Afghan economy” after the completion of the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Gorbachev’s formulation did not specify if military aid would be included, and he declined to respond to several other questions about Soviet involvement in Afghanistan.

-- He reaffirmed a declaration he made in Yugoslavia in March that the Soviet Union’s neighbors in Eastern Europe are free to choose their own political systems. But he voiced confidence they would “continue along the path” of Communist rule voluntarily, and he declined to criticize Soviet military intervention in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

-- Gorbachev said he favored setting fixed terms for senior Soviet Communist Party officials, including his own post as general secretary. He indicated this proposal may be presented at an unusual party conference he has called to endorse perestroika at the end of June.

-- He sharply dismissed reports of serious differences within the ruling Politburo over perestroika, labeling as “Western media” creations accounts that he and Yegor K. Ligachev, the second-ranking official in the Kremlin, are locked in a struggle for power.

But a decision by Soviet authorities to drop Ligachev’s name from the Russian-language version of the Washington Post-Newsweek interview, which will be published in Pravda on Monday, underscored the sensitivity about such reports being circulated inside the Soviet Union. Asked to reconcile his self-described policy of encouraging freedom of speech with recent arrests and harassment of Soviet political dissidents, he said Soviet citizens could raise criticism “only within the boundaries of socialism, and on the basis of socialist values.” He compared one dissident to a parasite “sponging on the positive aspects of perestroika. “

Debate Acknowledged

A frank acknowledgement by Gorbachev that “heated debate” has erupted over perestroika within the Soviet populace and leadership clearly established that he is different from previous Soviet leaders, who resolutely refused to acknowledge error or dissent in their society.

“The whole country is now an enormous debating society,” he said, claiming that the debate is a source of political strength for him rather than a sign of weakness. It was a guarantee of “an end to stagnation, an end to apathy” that had characterized Soviet society in recent years.

Efforts by Nikita S. Khrushchev and others to revitalize the Soviet Union failed because they did not rely on “the involvement of the people in modernizing and restructuring our country. I think we have learned from the past,” Gorbachev said when asked about Khrushchev, who was toppled from power in 1964.

The face-to-face conversation with the general secretary, which came as he was deeply involved in preparations for both the summit and the important June party conference, brought out two dominant patterns of dialogue and thought that have not emerged as clearly from his writings or from the four press conferences he has given in the West.

Gorbachev quickly established a pattern of frankly acknowledging problems at home and then asserting that perestroika and Soviet society are strong enough to overcome them. The June conference, he said, would give perestroika “a second wind” and permit “corrective measures.”

Sense of Caution

The second trait he evinced in person was a strong sense of caution, which led him to consciously balance his ideas as he developed them. This contrasted sharply with the image of boldness and charisma that has been projected abroad since he came to power in March, 1985.

He endorsed far-reaching and visionary goals, such as price reform, in the interview. But he tempered that idea, and others, with measured descriptions of the “carefully conceived and balanced proposals” that would gradually bring price reform and promised they would not lower the living standards of Soviet citizens.

Both in his written answers and in his spoken remarks, Gorbachev displayed pride in the close working relationship he and Reagan have developed since their first summit meeting in Geneva in 1985.

Avoiding the type of direct criticisms of the United States that have routinely marked public comments by Soviet officials in the past, Gorbachev conceded that U.S. policy did not appear to be determined solely by a military-industrial complex.

He proposed that the two nations continue the arms talks now under way in Geneva in their current form if he and Reagan fail to reach a new agreement before the President leaves office.

“We are ready to work. We don’t want to waste any time. We are prepared to continue,” Gorbachev said, suggesting that the Soviets want to lock into place the provisions that have already been agreed to in Geneva.

Earlier, in response to a question about his summit diplomacy with Reagan, he outlined in writing his concept of the “turn from confrontation to coexistence” he feels the two nations have taken:

‘Common Responsibility’

“We are all different and will remain so. We will remain loyal to our ideas and our way of life. But we have a common responsibility . . . the very continuation of Soviet-American dialogue at the summit level is important and substantive.”

Asked to evaluate Reagan, Gorbachev wrote:

“I’m not particularly fond of giving personal character references. But since you ask, I would like to say that realism is an important quality in President Reagan as a politician. By this I mean the ability to adapt one’s views to the changing situation, while remaining faithful to one’s convictions.”

While according credit to Reagan, the Soviet leader also implied that the major factor in ending an era of open hostility between Washington and Moscow had been a change in Reagan’s view of the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev acknowledged indirectly that no significant new arms control agreement would be concluded at the three-day Moscow summit next week as both sides had hoped only a few months ago.

But he sought to give new momentum to the arms talks in Geneva by calling for work to continue after the summit on a treaty that would cut the strategic nuclear arsenals of both sides by 50%.

If such an agreement “comes to be drafted under the present U.S. Administration, I see no reason why President Reagan and I should not sign it. I would certainly welcome that,” Gorbachev wrote.

He again opposed Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, which would put an anti-ballistic missile shield in space, and U.S. plans for a major deployment of sea-launched cruise missiles.

Gorbachev then unveiled his intention to propose to Reagan that the two nations cooperate on a joint space research project involving a flight to Mars as an alternative to a full SDI program.

During the Washington summit last December, Roald Sagdeyev, a Soviet science official close to Gorbachev, described publicly his own detailed proposal for unmanned missions to Mars that would begin by 1994.

The 1975 Apollo-Soyuz docking and a 1987 Soviet-American treaty for cooperation on space exploration were precedents for such a venture, Sagdeyev argued.

He also declined an opportunity in the conversation to specifically rule out future Soviet military intervention in Eastern Europe.

Asked about his willingness to tolerate political change in Poland, Gorbachev counseled his questioner “to put that question to the Polish people. . . . It is up to the Polish people to decide what they need for Poland. . . . I am confident (that) an overwhelming majority of people in Poland favor continuing along the path on which the country started” at the end of World War II.