Reagan Cites Progress on New Treaty

President Reagan said Monday that he and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev made “important additional strides” last week toward a treaty reducing long-range nuclear weapons but added that “we still do not know” when such a pact might be completed.

“We’re moving forward on the treaty and its associated documents with renewed vigor and cooperation,” he told an international conference of natural gas producers and users. Referring to pressure from Gorbachev for faster progress on such a treaty, which would reduce strategic ballistic missiles by 50%, Reagan added, “I won’t set deadlines.”

Monday’s speech was the latest of a number of upbeat Reagan assessments of the summit talks in Moscow that concluded last Thursday. The President declared that the “profound change of policy” in the Soviet Union holds out “powerful hope” for the future of East-West relations.

He called his visit to the Soviet capital “one of the highest privileges of my life,” and he said that the “greatest significance” of what took place there was that in sessions with Soviet citizens, he was able to speak “words of faith, words of freedom, words of truth.”

Reviewing developments in Moscow, Reagan said that “the most immediate impact on East-West relations” took place last Wednesday when the two superpowers put into effect the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, eliminating for the first time an entire class of nuclear missiles.

“With the treaty’s stringent verification measures, a new dimension of cooperation and trust will open between us,” he said.

He said the Moscow meeting had “borne out again the wisdom of our approach . . . to expand the agenda of Soviet-American relations beyond just arms control.” Therefore, he said, U.S. concerns about human rights, regional conflicts and people-to-people exchanges were also given a hearing.