Leaders Vow to ‘Bang Fists’ to Complete Strategic Pact

U.S. and Soviet officials signed two weapons accords Tuesday as President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, nearing the end of their four-day meeting, declared that they will bang their fists on the table if need be to spur agreement on a strategic arms reduction treaty before Reagan leaves office in January.

Although the accords they signed are relatively minor, their completion during the Moscow meeting was seen as evidence of the superpowers’ determination to maintain momentum on arms negotiations.

Only last weekend, Administration officials had said the two pacts had hit snags. One provides for notification of missile tests that begin and end within a country’s borders, and the other provides for joint experiments on monitoring tests of nuclear devices.

With both leaders expressing strong interest in achieving a strategic arms treaty, Gorbachev suggested that if the President “makes good use” of his remaining time in office, they will be able to conclude an agreement.

Reagan, seated with Gorbachev in the Soviet leader’s office on a brown couch under a portrait of Karl Marx, agreed that a treaty was possible.

Gorbachev, gesturing with his fist, recalled that when they had reached an impasse on an issue at their first meeting, in Geneva, the President had said, “Let’s stamp our fists on the table.”

“And I said, ‘All right,’ ” Gorbachev continued, “and by morning everything was agreed. Maybe now is again a time to bang our fists on the table.”

“I’ll do anything that works,” Reagan replied.

In agreeing to try to hasten progress, the two leaders were referring to the fact that much of the technical negotiating on complex issues such as arms control is done by teams of experts on both sides. Those teams sometimes get bogged down on details, and by exerting pressure on their teams from the top, the two leaders could speed the process.

For all the emphasis on arms control progress, this summit meeting, which concludes today, may best be remembered for its long-term impact on improving the broad context of U.S.-Soviet relations.

Most notable has been the apparent mellowing of Reagan’s attitude. The President, who entered office calling the Soviet Union “an evil empire,” has spoken admiringly here of reforms under Gorbachev. After touring Red Square on Tuesday, Reagan said it was very impressive.

The visit has also had a potentially significant impact on the Soviet people. In accord with Gorbachev’s reform program of glasnost, or openness, most of Reagan’s visit here, except for closed-door sessions between the two leaders, has been fully and accurately covered by Soviet television.

It has provided as many as 180 million Soviet citizens with such dramatic pictures as Tuesday’s guided tour around Red Square, with their leader describing the square and telling the President stories of the Kremlin’s 500-year history.

Live TV Coverage

In addition to covering the walk through Red Square, Soviet television canceled its scheduled programs to provide live coverage of the signing of the bilateral arms accords and of Reagan’s meeting with Soviet writers and artists.

Soviet officials, scientists and ordinary people on the street have been interviewed at length nightly about the importance of the visit to them. Even the President’s meeting Monday with dissidents in Spaso House was carried on Soviet television, although the session was quietly played down, and television and several newspapers carried articles or commentaries that reflected more on the dissidents and refuseniks than on Reagan.

No foreign visit, including those of Richard M. Nixon in 1972 and 1974, has had such wide and sympathetic Soviet news media coverage--an apparent reflection of the domestic political value Gorbachev sees for himself in the visit.

Even with that motive, the image of Reagan and Gorbachev standing together in Red Square, chatting about peace, Reagan with his arm around Gorbachev, is amazing in the context of the mutual suspicion that characterized Soviet-American relations until recently.

‘Very Sure of Himself’

A somewhat cynical Soviet newspaper commentator remarked privately Tuesday: “Gorbachev must be very sure of this new relationship and very sure of himself. . . . Look, if it goes bad, people will remember that he is the one who guided Reagan through the Kremlin.”

The arms accords implemented Tuesday were signed in ceremonies in the Red Room of the Kremlin by Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, with Reagan and Gorbachev looking on.

Seven lesser accords dealt with cultural and other bilateral relations.

The agreements signed Tuesday are all that are planned to be signed here, according to officials, although the two leaders will exchange the formal documents today ratifying the treaty that calls for elimination of ground-launched nuclear missiles with a range of between 300 and 3,400 miles.

The first agreement, which is a small slice out of the draft treaty on strategic arms, requires each superpower to give the other 24 hours’ notice of a ballistic missile test flight within its boundaries. International flights, as well as multiple test flights, already require advance notice.

Last-Minute Demands

The Soviets had raised last-minute demands that the agreement include a provision requiring U.S. ships and planes to stay farther from Soviet territory than the range of their long-distance weapons. The United States refused, contending that such measures had nothing to do with the strategic arms talks, and the Soviets withdrew their demands to permit the original schedule to be met, according to U.S. officials.

The second agreement, covering 160 pages, sets out procedures for conducting two joint verification experiments that will test techniques to measure the strength of underground nuclear tests. A Soviet device will be exploded in Nevada, and a U.S. device will be set off at Semipalatinsk in Central Asia under the pact.

The experiments will be an important step toward completing verification rules for two treaties limiting underground nuclear tests to 150 kilotons (the equivalent of 150,000 tons of TNT), signed more than a decade ago but not ratified.

The United States wants on-site inspection of every test above 50 kilotons, or at least two a year if none are that large. The Soviets hope to argue for less inspection if the experiments show the tests can be adequately verified from a distance.

The other bilateral accords cover the opening of cultural and information centers, including exchanges of students, as well as cooperation on atomic energy, space research, transportation, fisheries, maritime search and rescue, and radio navigation.

Defense Chiefs’ Meeting

In a parallel meeting Tuesday, Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci and Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov met for a second time to discuss various confidence-building measures, including notification of certain military exercises.

According to White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, they also talked about preventing dangerous encounters by military and naval craft of the two countries and measures to prevent the transfer of missile technology to Third World countries.

As the summit meeting draws to a close, U.S. officials say that its most dramatic impact on the President involves his ability to interact with the Soviet people and his feeling about “our ability to work with the Soviets.”

Reagan expressed “enthusiasm and excitement for the people that he got a chance to talk to and for the description of Red Square and the Kremlin that the general secretary gave him,” Fitzwater said. “He enjoyed that walk very much--a chance to get out and see the city.”

It was symbolic of the relationship developing between the two leaders, he said, that their one-on-one meeting Tuesday had been scheduled to last only 15 minutes but continued for more than an hour. A philosophical discussion developed after Reagan asked Gorbachev to expand on his views on where he is going with his reform program of perestroika, or restructuring of society.

‘Very Businesslike’

Fitzwater, describing their discussions here as “very businesslike” and “notably free from some of the arguments of past sessions,” said that “we think it’s gone very well up until this point, and are very hopeful for a good conclusion.”

Reagan’s trip began with a three-day visit to Helsinki and will have included 14 speeches, four one-on-one sessions with Gorbachev and numerous ceremonial occasions by the time he returns to Washington on Friday after a one-day visit to London.

Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov said the Soviets agreed that the summit sessions have been productive so far, but he expressed disappointment that more progress had not been made on strategic arms reduction.

The Soviet outlook generally as the summit meeting winds down appears to be quite optimistic.

The long one-on-one discussion, which by all accounts focused largely on perestroika , was unusual for summit meetings, which are usually carefully structured in advance, Soviet observers said. They noted that a session that had been scheduled had to be canceled because the meeting went on so long.

Building Trust

“They are building trust,” one Soviet official suggested. “Most of what is being done stems from the needs of our two countries, but the impetus to do it often is personal.”

Soviet officials say progress on strategic arms reduction--a prospective agreement on mobile missiles and a formula for counting air-launched cruise missiles--was as much as could be realistically expected from the summit meeting. They say it should provide the basis for an agreement on strategic arms later this year, providing a compromise can be found on sea-launched cruise missiles.

Roald Sagdeyev, director of the Soviet Institute of Space Studies and an adviser to the Soviet arms control negotiators, said Tuesday that “there is still time to make progress in the remaining hours of the summit” but that the issue of sea-launched cruise missiles is particularly difficult.

Gerasimov said, “If both sides demonstrate the political will, and the diplomats and the military roll up their sleeves, it is still feasible.”

Soviet View on SLCMs

As explained by Soviet officials this week, the Soviet position is that sea-launched cruise missiles, or SLCMs, must be part of any strategic arms agreement and that they cannot be put aside to get a treaty on other aspects.

From the Soviet viewpoint, the issue is verification--the number of ships with nuclear missiles and the number and type of missiles per ship. And the problem is complicated by the difficulty in distinguishing between sea-launched cruise missiles equipped with nuclear warheads and those carrying conventional explosives.

The Soviets are proposing on-site verification, or an arrangement in which the missiles can be counted by satellite.

Citing an American policy of not disclosing which ships carry nuclear weapons, the Soviets say the United States has rejected both Soviet proposals up to now.

“This rule of not saying which ships have nuclear weapons should be sacrificed to the first priority of reducing nuclear armaments,” Sagdeyev said. “And to leave this question to the future smells of the same arms race as we had with strategic missiles.”

Soviet officials complained again that the Americans still have shown no flexibility on the SLCM issue, and they stress that for Moscow there is little room to maneuver.

Dragging Their Feet

Georgy A. Arbatov, director of the Soviet Institute for the U.S.A. and Canada and an adviser to Soviet arms negotiators, said the Americans could solve the problem but are dragging their feet because they have an advantage in this weapon system that they do not want to give up.

In negotiating terms, moreover, there is some Soviet concern that agreement here on the easier issues of mobile missiles and air-launched cruise missiles might, paradoxically, make the sea-launched missile problem harder to solve because the Soviets will not have much to trade for the necessary U.S. concession.

The other difficult strategic arms issue--the Reagan Administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative--is quickly fading as an obstacle to an agreement, according to Soviet officials.

The Soviet assessment is that after Reagan leaves office, the U.S. commitment to the program will fade, and that although work will continue on various elements, such as lasers and radar, the overall project for an air-based missile defense system will quietly die.

The Soviet strategy clearly has become to push hard for a strategic arms agreement with the Reagan Administration, believing that the President has a personal commitment to achieving an agreement during the last months of his term and that time will be lost with any new President while he learns the issue.

Times staff writer Robert C. Toth also contributed to this article.