Hopes for Strategic Arms Treaty Told : Summit Could Lead to Accord Before Reagan Leaves Office, Officials Say

As President Reagan prepared to fly to Moscow this morning for his four-day summit with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, White House officials said that progress at the summit could lead to a strategic arms reduction treaty before Reagan leaves office.

While no major breakthroughs are expected in Moscow, the President will arrive at the summit with new proposals that address many of the outstanding issues, officials said.

They acknowledged, however, that despite their own hopes and what they described as Reagan’s “upbeat” mood, major obstacles remain on completing a strategic arms reduction, or START, treaty during Reagan’s final seven months in office.

Difficult issues of verification are still unresolved, officials noted, and the American defense community remains divided over precisely what sort of nuclear arsenal the nation should build in the years ahead--especially in the area of cruise missiles.

Notice of Test Firings

Moreover, pre-summit arms negotiations ended in what U.S. officials considered a somewhat disappointing failure to reach agreement on a relatively uncontroversial point, that of each superpower’s providing the other with advance notice of all strategic missile test firings within its borders. That point, not considered vital in its own right, had nonetheless been viewed as a valuable “confidence-building” measure and thus a possible boost for larger arms accord prospects.

One clear positive element for the Administration at the summit is the fact that White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. was flying to Helsinki to join Reagan aboard Air Force One for today’s flight to Moscow, carrying with him the final U.S. ratification documents for the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which won last-minute Senate approval Friday.

Reagan and Gorbachev will formally ratify the INF treaty by exchanging their nation’s ratification documents in an official ceremony in the Kremlin during their final summit session Wednesday. Attending the ceremony at Reagan’s invitation will be Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.). They led the fight for approval of the agreement.

The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet officially approved the treaty Saturday, continuing a Soviet pattern of moving formal approval of the accord ahead in lock-step with the United States.

Despite pre-summit friction on sensitive issues of human rights, Assistant Secretary of State Rozanne L. Ridgway said that human rights will be the first subject to be taken up on the summit agenda today.

And, although she said that Reagan would recognize progress in the field under Gorbachev’s reform program, the President was not backing away from charges that Moscow has failed to live up to its commitments under the Helsinki accords.

While the Soviets have rejected criticism of their human rights record made by Reagan during a speech in Helsinki on Friday, a spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry played down the episode, saying that the President’s “statement is no different from previous statements.”

“We have quite a lot to say and will listen to what the Americans have to say,” the Kremlin official said. “Discussion is a two-way street.”

Nonetheless, the subject of arms control appeared to assume a higher profile as the actual beginning of the summit neared. Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze and Secretary of State George P. Shultz will meet for separate arms talks, even as Reagan and Gorbachev hold their summit sessions, officials said.

And Reagan, in an interview with Soviet television, said he thinks a strategic arms treaty “can be concluded,” but he said nothing about a target date.

“It would have been nice if we could have achieved a signing ceremony there on this visit, but this treaty is far more technical and complicated than the treaty we did sign,” he said, referring to the INF agreement.

‘Correct’ Treaty Sought

“I think that perhaps we can advance it in our conversations, discussion in Moscow,” he said. “The idea is to continue until we have the treaty that is correct, and not simply try to meet a date and sign a treaty that might not be all that we would desire.”

Asked specifically whether he thought such a treaty would eventually be signed, Reagan replied: “Yes, I do. I don’t think either of us (would have) gone this far with (an) idea that . . . wasn’t a good idea.”

Lt. Gen. Colin L. Powell, the White House national security adviser, expressed optimism that there will be “some additional movement” on START in Moscow, though he said he does not expect a “breakthrough.”

He said that despite the issue of verification and other problems, there is still an opportunity before Reagan leaves office to reach agreement on a START treaty, which would cut each side’s strategic, or intercontinental, missile arsenals in half.

To move the process forward, Powell said that Reagan will arrive in Moscow with new proposals on outstanding issues, although he declined to give specifics.

Work on Pact to Continue

“The outlines of an agreement are already there,” Powell said, adding that U.S. negotiators will continue working on the arms proposal in Washington and Geneva after the Moscow summit ends.

Despite looking tired while he delivered his Helsinki address--one of 14 speeches and talks he is to give during the nine-day summit trip--the President, according to Powell, is “healthy and very well rested” on the eve of his first meeting with Gorbachev in the Kremlin this afternoon.

The 77-year old chief executive was briefed on summit issues for an hour Saturday morning and another hour in the afternoon by both Powell and Shultz. And officials said he later took bulky briefing books with him to his quarters at the Finnish government guest house, where he has been staying since his arrival here Thursday.

In his regular Saturday radio address, Reagan expressed hope for progress in another area scheduled for review at the summit: regional issues.

The President said: “In Asia, Africa and Central America, unpopular regimes use Soviet arms to repress their own people and commit aggression against neighboring states. These regional conflicts extract a terrible toll of suffering and threaten to draw the United States and the Soviet Union into direct confrontation.”

Interview in Oval Office

The President’s interview with Soviet television was taped in the Oval Office in mid-May and was broadcast Saturday in the Soviet Union. A transcript of the 34-minute session was made available by the traveling White House in Helsinki.

The questioning was conducted by Valentin Zorin and Boris Kalyagin, two commentators whose faces are familiar to Soviet television viewers. They specialize in interviewing foreign leaders.

“Good evening, comrades,” the interview began. “We are in the White House in Washington, D.C., the residence of the head of the American government.”

The overall tone of the interview--both on Reagan’s part and on that of the Soviets, as reflected by their questions--was upbeat.

Reagan said he was “obviously looking forward to the trip” and that the United States was “greatly heartened” by the beginning of the Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

‘Optimistic’ on Cooperation

Asked what he thought were the prospects for greater cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union, Reagan said, “I have to be optimistic about it.”

As he has in the past--but for the first time before an audience that the interviewers estimated to be 200 million Soviet citizens--Reagan said “there is a difference between this general secretary and other leaders of your country that I had met with in the past,” and it is that difference that has made it possible for Reagan to visit Moscow.

Reagan continued:

“We can be competitive without being hostile to the point of conflict with each other. I think this is what we’re aiming at.”

The President sought to explain the American system of government to his viewers, pointing out that in the United States, it is the people that allow the government to take certain actions under the Constitution, and that under the Soviet constitution, the government enunciates the rights and privileges given to the people.

Praise for Soviet Women

At the end of the interview, Reagan interjected, without being asked, that he wanted to express “a great admiration for the women of the Soviet Union, particularly in the Russian area.”

“From the outside. . , they seem to be a great bulwark of strength and solidity in the maintaining of the home and the things they stand for--the standing in lines to bring home what is necessary for the family and all of that. And I just wonder if they’re getting the credit within your country that I think they deserve,” he said.

In another interview, with the weekly Soviet magazine Ogonyok, Reagan called for a greater exchange of information in the Soviet Union, under Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika, or restructuring.

“Your government is known for its high regard for secrecy, and you pay a price for that policy,” the President told the magazine, which is a pro-Gorbachev journal that has been a spearhead supporter of perestroika and has developed a reputation for aggressive reporting.

Reagan, in written responses to questions submitted by the magazine, said that information-sharing was responsible for much of the West’s progress, adding:

“As long as Soviet society remains off limits to the rest of the world, inhibiting the free flow of information and restricting travel in and out of the U.S.S.R., your economy will be limited in its ability to be part of the world economy.”

Meantime, a State Department official said that efforts to extract from the pre-summit START negotiations a separate confidence-building accord on strategic missile test firings were prevented when the Soviet side proposed that additional confidence-building measures unrelated to START also be concluded.

This Soviet move caused immediate speculation that the Kremlin prefers to avoid small new agreements that might give the impression of U.S.-Soviet progress, in order to build pressure for major advances in START.

Specifically, the United States had wanted to break out of the START treaty draft an already agreed-upon section that would commit both sides to give advance notification of missile test firings that were launched from and landed within their own territories. Notice must now be given on test flights that originate in or land in international regions.

The Soviets appeared amenable at first, but then proposed additional measures. One measure would have prohibited U.S. aircraft carriers from steaming within their aircraft’s range of the Soviet Union. Another would have required U.S. bombers to maintain a distance beyond the Soviet Union outside the range of their air-launched cruise missiles, the U.S. official said.

Diplomatic Turn Down

These proposals, while previously mentioned by the Soviets, “had nothing to do with START,” the official said. The United States agreed to examine them but concluded that they were “a diplomatic way of turning down” the initial U.S. idea, he added.

Despite that setback, the official supported Powell’s relatively upbeat prognosis for the START. “We feel we’ve come with good stuff this time,” he said, referring to several proposals on outstanding arms issues that could lead to progress at the summit and possible resolution before the end of the year.

He cited in particular the issue of air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs), on which the two sides differ on several particulars, including whether to limit missile ranges, what to do about the fact that it is difficult to verify whether such missiles are armed with conventional or nuclear warheads and, more importantly, the number of ALCMs to be attributed to each bomber capable of carrying them them.

The United States wants to attribute an average load of 10 to each bomber, while the Soviets want to count each according to its maximum capacity--28 for a B-52, for example. The United States might raise its offer to 12, according to earlier speculation.

The United States was also coming to Moscow with new proposals on mobile land-based missiles and on sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs), the official said, which are two even more difficult issues in the START talks.

Limits on Mobile Missiles

Currently, the United States wants to ban mobile long-range missiles but is expected to eventually agree to limits on the weapons, if constraints on their number and basing modes can be reached to permit adequate verification.

On SLCMs, the United States believes that no acceptable verification scheme can distinguish between conventional and nuclear-tipped missiles and rejects Soviet proposals for a ceiling on them. Instead, it would have each side publicly “declare” how many missiles of each type it was deploying, with the other side free to adjust its number accordingly.

As a result of the new U.S. positions, which the official indicated were more forthcoming than in the past, he saw a chance for “possible progress” on these difficult issues during the summit, but no actual resolution of them.

Another reason for the relative optimism, he indicated, was that the Soviets want intensive discussion on START to begin immediately after Reagan arrives in Moscow on Sunday. Working groups of experts from both sides on arms issues are due to begin meeting at the same time that Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev hold their first meeting.

SUPERPOWER SUMMIT CHRONOLOGY

September 1959 -- Camp David, Md. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Nikita S. Khrushchev. Summit produces general “Spirit of Camp David” agreement that superpower disputes should be settled by negotiation and that disarmament was the most important question facing the world.

June 1961 -- Vienna. John F. Kennedy and Khrushchev. Angry exchanges reflect East-West Cold War tensions.

June 1967 -- Glassboro, N.J. Lyndon B. Johnson and Alexei N. Kosygin. The Middle East, Vietnam War and nuclear issues are on the agenda but no formal accords reached.

May 1972 -- Moscow. Richard M. Nixon and Leonid I. Brezhnev open era of detente, sign Strategic Arms Limitation and Anti-Ballistic Missile treaties, plus scientific, cultural and economic pacts.

June 1973 -- Washington. Nixon and Brezhnev agree to try to complete a new arms control treaty by 1974.

June-July 1974 -- Moscow. Nixon and Brezhnev sign agreements limiting the power of underground nuclear tests and further restricting anti-missile systems.

November 1974 -- Vladivostok. Gerald R. Ford and Brezhnev reach preliminary agreements on the groundwork for a SALT-2 accord.

June 1979 -- Vienna. Jimmy Carter and Brezhnev sign SALT-2 limiting nuclear missiles, bombers and cruise missiles. (Treaty is never ratified by U.S. Senate.)

November 1985 -- Geneva. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev agree to accelerate negotiations on nuclear and space weapons.

October 1986 -- Reykjavik, Iceland. Reagan and Gorbachev consider proposals for scrapping medium-range missiles (300-3,400 miles) and reducing long-range missiles. Deal falls apart amid recriminations when Gorbachev over U.S. “Star Wars” missile defense research program.

December 1987 - Washington. Reagan and Gorbachev sign a treaty banning medium-range buclearmissiles. Agreement on strategic arms remains snagged over Star Wars.

Times staff writer Robert C. Toth in Helsinki contributed to this story.