Toronto Summit Opens; No Farm Accord Likely : Harmony Prevails in Afterglow of Moscow

The leaders of the seven major industrialized nations opened the final economic summit conference of Ronald Reagan’s presidency Sunday, saluting his economic policies and the harmony that now marks the relations of the major democracies.

Gathering for the 14th summit in as many years, the seven leaders met in the afterglow of the Moscow summit conference, giving each other verbal pats on the back for what they see as the payoff of allied unity and--in the economic sphere--the successful coordination of their fiscal policies that helped the West and Japan withstand the shock of the Oct. 19 stock market crash last year.

‘Problems Are Immense’

If there was any hint of disagreement during the approximately 2 1/2-hour session Sunday afternoon, it came when the group turned to the always-sensitive issue of domestic agriculture policies and Reagan’s effort to persuade the others to eliminate farm subsidies.

“The problems are immense,” Reagan told the group, according to his spokesman.

The seven--Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada, President Francois Mitterrand of France, Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany, Prime Minister Ciriaco De Mita of Italy, Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita of Japan, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain and Reagan--met in a sparse, modernistic, windowless chamber, known only as Room 106, in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, just a few blocks from Lake Ontario.

And the harmony, as described by the participants’ spokesmen, was as far in mood from the contentiousness and division that marked Reagan’s first economic summit as the stark glass, cement and steel convention center in downtown Toronto is in feeling from the sprawling, aging Laurentian Mountain lodge where Reagan first met his summit partners seven years ago in the province of Quebec.

It was at that meeting that Mitterrand, the Socialist, and Reagan, the conservative Republican, met for the first time. Their relationship has blossomed, and on Sunday, according to a French spokesman, Mitterrand congratulated Reagan on the American’s stand against trade protectionism.

Red Carpet

As each of the seven leaders arrived for the meeting Sunday, they walked along a red carpet and past bountiful floral bouquets, before stepping onto an escalator that carried them one floor below street level to the meeting room.

Reagan, clad casually on the warm, sunny afternoon in a blue blazer and gray slacks, began to turn the wrong way as he stepped off the escalator, nearly missing his greeting from Mulroney.

With Takeshita and De Mita attending the summit conference for the first time as their nations’ leaders, Reagan suggested, as he has in the past, that the participants address each other by their first names.

“My name is Ron,” he said. But White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said Reagan’s approach at informality was ignored, at least during the highly structured opening session.

According to spokesmen for the summit leaders, Sunday’s session was devoted primarily to upbeat reviews of global economic conditions. Sessions today and Tuesday morning will be devoted to trade, economic cooperation, global anti-drug efforts, terrorism, and a review of East-West relations following Reagan’s meeting earlier this month with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Tight Security

In an atmosphere of extremely tight security, Reagan’s arrival in downtown Toronto was briefly delayed, Fitzwater said, by a “red alert” when a man carrying a bag marked “ammunition” was spotted near the motorcade route from the Lester B. Pearson Airport. Upon investigation by Canadian authorities--who have erected a protective cordon around the convention center and installed an approximately 15-foot chain-link fence around the building and an adjacent lot--the bag was found to contain the man’s lunch, the White House spokesman said.

For the President, the visit to Toronto is a final performance on an international stage, barring a fifth summit meeting--as of now unplanned--with Gorbachev.

His months in office are slipping away and his senior aides are departing. White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. and Communications Director Thomas C. Griscom announced their resignations last week and did not make the trip to Canada, and Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III is expected to give up his post to devote himself full time to Vice President George Bush’s presidential campaign.

But despite the exodus and the toll of the calendar, senior White House officials are making every effort to portray Reagan as still a key player on the domestic political scene and in international affairs.

So, as they try in this summit of low expectations to avoid looking backward, the focus of the President and his senior advisers is as much on future policies of the industrialized nations as it is on his initial meetings with the six other summit partners, and his preparatory briefings at the White House concentrated both on what a senior aide called “the vision for the future” and the opportunity the meeting offers “to talk about the things we’ve been able to do.”

But the nostalgic tenor of the President’s visit was summed up at the very start, when, according to Fitzwater, Reagan held a private meeting with Mulroney that was “primarily an opportunity for two old friends to recall the great distances they have traveled together. . . .”

And the President, in a reflective mood during an interview last week in the Oval Office with The Times and reporters from six other newspapers published in the summit nations, harked back to his introduction to the international summits and said:

“My valedictory . . . would be simply an expression of the great pleasure that I’ve had and the great enjoyment of knowing them all and the way that we have become so close. But also, the things that we have together achieved. And just a farewell word to keep on in the same practice and the same relationship with whoever comes into this position next.”

Over the years, Reagan’s position in the annual summits has emerged from that of a newcomer, whose conservative economic ideas rooted in his espousal of free-market policies were looked upon with curiosity and a large degree of skepticism, to a central figure--one to whom others were turning to discover the essence of the American economic recovery of the mid-1980s.

At the first summit of the Reagan Administration, held only a few hundred miles from here in Montebello, Quebec, “and for the next go-round or so,” Reagan recalled, “I wasn’t a very authoritative voice in the discussions.

“But when we put in place our economic recovery program and it turned out to be so successful, I arrived one day and to my great joy, they were sitting there to ask me, how did I explain the American miracle? And I hadn’t heard that term before.”

Now, at what has been dubbed his “sunset summit,” the 77-year-old President--his hair noticeably streaked with gray, particularly in the trademark pompadour, his hands wrinkled with age, and his voice less vibrant in quiet discussion than in his earlier years in office--is trying to turn the focus of the other summit participants to what one senior White House official said was a “consensus on free trade and free markets.”

The meeting, occurring as the list of candidates to succeed Reagan has been narrowed to two, offers an opportunity, another senior White House aide said, “to talk about where do we go from here, what should be the goals--a recognition that there are other competitors out there and how do you work with them?”

At the same time, the President’s advisers feel that even though this is the last time he is likely to meet with the other summit partners in a group, it is too early in his presidency for farewells.

“You’ve got to be careful about doing things before their time,” said the official, expressing concern that any premature goodby will simply hasten the ebbing of presidential authority from the lame-duck White House.