Reagan Cites Soviet Rights Gains but Calls for More : President Conciliatory, Firm in Helsinki Speech

President Reagan, striking a note of optimism two days before going to Moscow for his fourth summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, held out hope Friday that they can “take another step toward a brighter future and a safer world.”

In a carefully worded speech that was conciliatory yet firm in recognizing recent Soviet progress on human rights but insisting that more must be done, Reagan previewed the points he will make and the tone of his approach in Moscow.

He praised Gorbachev for his efforts to reform the Soviet system through his campaigns for glasnost, or openness, and perestroika, or economic restructuring.

And the President--who had angered Gorbachev with an April 21 speech in Springfield, Mass., that detailed how the Soviet Union “oppresses its own people”--refrained from any such harsh criticism Friday.

But Reagan said that despite significant progress, Moscow still has not lived up to commitments on human rights and other issues embodied in the Helsinki Final Act, signed here almost 13 years ago by the United States, the Soviet Union and 33 other nations taking part in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Suggesting steps that he said the Soviets could take to deepen and institutionalize promised reforms, Reagan called for legal and practical protection of free expression and worship. He said he applauds Gorbachev’s recent statement that “believers are Soviet people, workers, patriots, and they have the full right to express their convictions with dignity.”

The 77-year-old President, his voice hoarse and weaker than usual, appeared to be tired as he read the 33-minute speech before a packed audience of 1,700 Finnish leaders and other dignitaries in the modernistic Finlandia Hall.

The audience listened in silence, but the President was warmly received with applause both before and after his address.

Commitments and Practice

Discussing the Helsinki Final Act specifically, Reagan said that “Soviet practice does not--or does not yet--measure up to Soviet commitments.”

He questioned why, when Gorbachev is committed to reform, cases of divided families and blocked marriages remain on the East-West agenda, and why Soviet citizens who wish to emigrate should be subject to artificial quotas or arbitrary rulings.

“And what are we to think of the continual suppression of those who seek to practice their religious beliefs?” Reagan asked.

He added, “Over 300 men and women whom the world sees as political prisoners have been released. There remains no reason why the Soviet Union cannot release all people still in jail for expression of political or religious beliefs or for organizing to monitor the Helsinki Act.”

Praises Soviet Changes

Since Gorbachev’s reform campaigns began, he said, “things have happened that all of us applaud,” including greater toleration of dissent; allowing higher levels of emigration; the release from labor camps or exile of dissidents such as Andrei D. Sakharov; the publication of books and the release of movies that criticize the Soviet system and that were previously banned; Gorbachev’s statements of religious tolerance, and the beginning of the Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Reagan’s statements are bound to stir opposition not only from the President’s conservative constituency, which already has accused him of being too accommodating toward Moscow, but among some Jewish leaders who feel the Soviets have been dragging their feet on human rights and Jewish emigration.

Before the President spoke, for example, Morris B. Abram of New York, president of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, told reporters here that the Soviet Union still is “a totally oppressive society, a totalitarian society.”

Abram, one of 40 Americans scheduled to hold a demonstration here today, denounced the Soviets for not normalizing emigration policies and said the 8,000 Jews they permitted to emigrate in the past year were “a mere dribble” compared to the number who want to leave the Soviet Union.

Reagan, speaking in the hall where the Helsinki Final Act was signed, defended his position on Soviet progress on human rights by saying that while “many” contend that the act has not worked, “I believe it has.”

Shift in Reagan View

The President’s praise for the human rights gains that have flowed from the Helsinki agreement formed the core of his speech. And his positive view marked a substantial evolution in Reagan’s thinking: When it was signed in 1975, he was sharply critical, saying, “I’m against it, and I think all Americans should be against it.”

Three years later, Reagan said he opposed the Helsinki accords because “we gave the Russians something they wanted for 35 years. In effect, we recognized the Soviet Union’s right to hold captive” Eastern Europe.

He also predicted at the time that the Soviets would not live up to the agreement, saying, “The Russians make promises. They don’t keep them.”

On Friday, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, questioned about the change in the President’s views, said, “He certainly believes the position he took today.”

Human rights is emerging as one of the central issues in the Moscow talks, and Reagan has planned at least two events--a visit to the restored Russian Orthodox Danilov Monastery and a meeting with dissidents at the U.S. ambassador’s residence--to dramatize his appeal for greater respect on the part of the Soviets for such liberties as freedom of worship and travel.

“One of the points the President will make when he’s meeting with the dissidents is that they have a just cause,” Fitzwater said.

Other Gains Ease Tension

Cataloguing other signs of progress toward reducing tensions in the world, Reagan said that, by and large, all 35 nations that signed the act have also honored “both the spirit and letter” of the Stockholm document of Confidence and Security-Building Measures in Europe. The document lays down the rules by which the nations notify each other of coming military activities in Europe, invite observers to larger military activities and permit on-site inspections to make sure the agreement is honored.

The Western, neutral and nonaligned nations have set a strong example in providing full information about their military activities, Reagan said, “and the Soviet Union and its allies also have a generally good record of implementation, though less forthcoming than the West.”

Ten on-site military inspections have been conducted and increasing numbers of countries are exercising the right to make such inspections, he said, which should make them “a matter of routine business” and “improve openness and enhance confidence.”

Outside Finlandia Hall, about 40 elderly Finns awaited the President and First Lady Nancy Reagan, singing to the tune of “Happy Birthday” their own song for the occasion: “Happy welcome, dear Nancy, happy welcome to you.”

Lunch With Finnish Leader

Earlier in the day, Reagan reviewed the schedules for his five-day visit in Moscow, which begins Sunday, and conferred briefly with President Mauno Koivisto of Finland. He joined the Finnish leader for lunch at the presidential palace, a three-story building overlooking the Helsinki harbor and the Gulf of Finland.

As a motorcade carried Reagan through the downtown neighborhoods, clusters of Helsinki residents waved small American flags and the blue cross on a white field that is the standard of Finland.

During a picture-taking session at the start of the meeting with Koivisto, Reagan appeared at first to seek to play down the decision by the Kremlin to cancel one of the five meetings planned for him and Gorbachev. “I think we have to recognize that the government has normal business that has to be conducted, and we have to schedule accordingly,” he said.

But, pressed to comment on whether the summit is more important than “normal business,” he said, “I don’t think there’s anything more important as far as I’m concerned, but they have. . . .” And his voice trailed off.

In his address, Reagan cited gains in the security field, but said that by contrast, economic relations between the East and the West “are bedeviled by differences in our systems.”

Increases in non-strategic trade may contribute to better East-West relations, he said, but added that it is difficult to relate the state-run economies of the East to the essentially free-market economies of the West.

Noting that Moscow was once known as the City of the Forty Forties because there were 1,600 belfries in the city’s churches, Reagan said some churches have reopened. But there still are relatively few functioning churches and almost no bells, he said.

“What a magnificent demonstration of good will it would be for the Soviet leadership for church bells to ring out again, not only in Moscow but throughout the Soviet Union,” the President declared.