U.S. Firm on Soviets, Reagan Assures Allies : Leaves Today for 4th Talks With Gorbachev

President Reagan, preparing to leave today for his record-breaking fourth summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Moscow, sought to reassure Western allies Tuesday that his Soviet policies are based on realism and strength.

Reagan, who has been criticized by some of his old conservative colleagues for being too cozy with Gorbachev and nursing a romantic view of the Soviet Union, said he did not expect “a quick, radical transformation” of the Soviet system under Gorbachev. He said he sees a responsibility to “stand firm and vigilant, to provide the incentive for a new Soviet policy in contrast to the old.”

The President, in a speech taped Monday and broadcast in Europe on Tuesday by the U.S. Information Agency, stressed that despite recent progress in U.S.-Soviet relations, “there still remain profound political and moral differences” between the two systems.

While praising the Soviets for releasing political and religious prisoners, Reagan declared that the human rights situation in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe “is far from good.” He criticized restraints on religion, peaceful demonstrations, freedom of movement and unofficial publications.

Although the summit is expected to produce little in the way of substantive results, Reagan held out hope that negotiations with Gorbachev would help spur the two sides to reach agreement on a treaty to reduce strategic nuclear weapons before the President leaves office in January.

However, he declared that the objective is “a good treaty” and “not some arbitrary deadline that will determine the timetable.”

December Accord Cited

As an example of a good treaty, Reagan cited the agreement that he and Gorbachev signed in Washington last December banning ground-launched intermediate-range nuclear weapons.

But even as his speech was broadcast, he was meeting with conservative senators who have blocked Senate ratification of the treaty. When Reagan leaves today, White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. will stay behind to work for ratification before Reagan’s first scheduled meeting with Gorbachev on Sunday.

Reagan’s first stop will be Helsinki, Finland, where he will make a major speech and spend some time recovering from jet lag before proceeding to Moscow on Sunday. Immediately after Reagan is welcomed at a Kremlin ceremony, the President will go into an initial session with Gorbachev that was added to the schedule at the Soviets’ request.

Pattern of Earlier Summit

The White House, which had tried to pattern the Moscow summit after last December’s meeting in Washington, originally had not scheduled the session, according to Tom Griscom, Reagan’s communications director. Gorbachev, upon arriving for the summit here, was greeted by Vice President George Bush and went immediately to the Soviet Embassy. The official welcoming ceremony with Reagan did not take place until the next day.

But Griscom said there is no problem accommodating the Soviets on scheduling a Sunday meeting. “We come in mid-afternoon, and you’re at the Kremlin anyway,” he said, “so once you have the arrival ceremony, you just go into a room for a short period of time.”

Despite seeking “symmetry” between the Washington and Moscow summit schedules, Griscom and other U.S. planners said they tried to avoid making it appear that the President would be mimicking Gorbachev.

“One of the things we tried to do was to avoid a tit-for-tat with Gorbachev,” one official said.

Sticking to the Script

Although Reagan may add a spontaneous event or two to the schedule as he travels about the Soviet capital, he is expected to stick closely to the White House script. Officials said they did not want the President’s performance to be compared with Gorbachev’s when he was in Washington.

The Soviet leader scored a public relations triumph when, in a seemingly spontaneous move, he ordered the driver of his Soviet limousine to halt at a busy intersection so that he could climb out and shake hands with lunchtime strollers.

Might the 77-year-old President engage in such a gambit in Moscow?

“I don’t think the President should do anything based on what the general secretary did here,” a senior White House official said. “Probably one of the worst things you could do is have a situation in which people say they tried to one-up each other. Jumping out of a limousine isn’t how this President communicates.”

A Variety of Citizens

Yet when he is not talking with Gorbachev, Reagan will meet with a variety of Soviet citizens, much as Gorbachev welcomed American business leaders and news media executives to the Soviet Embassy in Washington.

Each of the sessions Reagan will attend in Moscow was arranged to stress the President’s overall agenda: to demonstrate improvement in U.S.-Soviet ties and to encourage Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, or greater openness in Soviet society.

“What we’re looking for is to recognize that there is change going on (in the Soviet Union), to encourage those in the midst of the change to continue in that direction,” another senior White House official said.

The President, he said, will strive to demonstrate “a willingness to show a better understanding of how the Soviet people live,” while at the same time helping them to “a better understanding of America.”

Moscow University Visit

Thus the President will visit Moscow State University, addressing students on the subject of U.S.-Soviet relations with what White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater called an “accent on youth.”

He also will visit the restored Danilov Monastery to highlight what his Administration sees as a somewhat more tolerant official view toward the practice of religion since Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party in 1985.

Critics, on the other hand, have called the monastery a showpiece that actually hides a still-repressive approach toward organized religion in the Soviet Union. Indeed, as final details for the visit were being worked out, one White House official complained that it is uncertain which Soviet religious figures would be allowed to attend the meeting.

“They’re not being cooperative,” he said. “We’re running into a brick wall. The issue is still out there. I’m not sure it’ll come off the way it’s supposed to.”

Sampling of the Arts

And, in what officials describe as a bow to his former profession, the one-time movie actor will visit representatives of the Soviet arts community, including film-makers, visual artists and poets and the townhouse of the Soviet writers’ union.

The summit will mark the first visit of an American President to Moscow since Richard M. Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev met in June, 1974, in a meeting that was overshadowed by the deepening Watergate crisis, which led to Nixon’s resignation two months later. No other American President has ever participated in four summits with a Soviet leader, and only Nixon and Dwight D. Eisenhower took part in three.