Summit Ends in Hope for ‘Era of Peace’ : Reagan Fly to London for Tea With Queen, Dinner With Thatcher

President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev bade farewell at the Kremlin today. Gorbachev said they had moved superpower relations “from a dangerous track to a safer one,” and Reagan expressed hope for “an era of peace.”

Ending the first visit to the Soviet Union by an American President in 14 years, Reagan said he had been moved by the reception he got in Moscow. Gorbachev took the occasion to prod Reagan to move faster on the issues facing the two superpowers.

The talks completed the most frequent superpower summits in history, four in just 30 months, underscoring the dramatic turnaround in U.S.-Soviet relations since the first meeting in 1985. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon each had three summits with their Soviet counterparts.

Tea With Queen

Reagan flew today from Moscow to London, where he and the First Lady had tea with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and dinner with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. On Friday, Reagan delivers a speech on East-West relations.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who flew separately to Brussels to brief America’s NATO allies, called the talks “a good, realistic, businesslike summit meeting.”

The meetings here produced renewed vows by leaders to improve East-West relations and put into force the first-ever treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons. But Reagan and Gorbachev did not advance prospects for a long-range missile treaty in any substantive fashion.

The Reagans said goodby to the Gorbachevs in the same Kremlin hall where America’s first couple was greeted Sunday.

Raisa Gorbachev presented Nancy Reagan a bouquet of roses in what perhaps will the last encounter for two first ladies whose relationship was never warm.

“This is an emotional moment for Mrs. Reagan and me,” the President said, telling the Gorbachevs he had seen and learned much about “this Moscow spring.”

Reagan said he was impressed with the Soviet people he encountered.

Smiles and Waves

“At first they were curious faces, but as time went on, the smiles began and then the waves,” he said, “And I don’t have to tell you Nancy and I smiled back and waved just as hard.”

Gorbachev thanked Reagan for “cooperation, openness and a businesslike approach to the talks that we have had here.”

But the Communist Party general secretary also said there were missed opportunities at the Moscow summit.

“Our dialogue has not been easy,” Gorbachev said, “but we mustered enough realism and political will to overcome obstacles and divert the train of U.S.-Soviet relations from a dangerous track to a safer one. It is, however, so far, been moving much more slowly than is required. . . .”

Arriving today in London at Winfield House, the 35-room mansion where he will stay, Reagan was asked what he meant in Moscow when he seemed to blame the bureaucracy for restricting emigration.

“I don’t think I made it that definite, but that is some of the problems there, just as there are in our country,” he replied. “I was answering a question, a specific question, that is not to say that it was not all just a bureaucracy.”

Asked whether Gorbachev might be responsible for the repressive laws, Reagan responded, “I was trying to put out that sometimes cases of that kind do not get that far up the ladder.”