Kremlin Aide Also Hopeful on Better Ties With Israel : Soviets Upbeat on Dealing With Bush

Preparing the ground for Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s visit this week, upbeat Soviet officials said Sunday that Moscow can work with President-elect George Bush and expressed hope that some of Bush’s doubts about Gorbachev can be eased during Wednesday’s lunch.

One of the officials, Nikolai V. Shishlin, also said that Israel’s quick return of four Soviet aircraft hijackers should speed the day when the Soviets restore diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. Those relations were broken by Moscow during the Six-Day War in 1967.

Two former U.S. ambassadors to the United Nations, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick and Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan (D-N.Y.), said that the Kremlin could improve prospects for peace in the Middle East if it sought to repeal the decade-old U.N. resolution that equates Zionism and racism. The Soviets first raised the concept and pushed the resolution, Moynihan said.

“It is impossible for the United Nations to play a positive role in the Mideast as long as the Soviets and their friends are pushing” to rob Israel of its legitimacy through the resolution, Kirkpatrick said.

The two Americans appeared with Shishlin, a member of the Communist Party’s Central Committee, on the NBC program “Meet the Press.”

Shishlin predicted that Gorbachev “will have in his pocket very interesting initiatives” to present during his speech to the United Nations and luncheon with President Reagan and Bush on Wednesday. He did not elaborate, however.

‘Heir to Reagan’

Asked for the Soviet view of the President-elect, Shishlin said, “Bush is the heir of Reagan.” There were “no brilliant ideas about Soviet-American relations” in Bush’s campaign speeches, he added, but afterward, his comments about U.S.-Soviet relations were positive.

“I think we can work with Mr. Bush as productively as with Mr. Reagan,” Shishlin said.

Gennady I. Gerasimov, spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry, called Bush a “good pragmatic leader.” Asked on the ABC program “This Week With David Brinkley” if he expected Bush to be “tougher than Reagan,” Gerasimov said that “continuity is the name of the game” and that the three men will meet at lunch “to pass the torch.”

Gerasimov appeared to accept the fact that Bush was less enthusiastic about Gorbachev during the campaign than Reagan. “Everybody is entitled to his own doubts,” he said, “but I hope that these doubts will be cleared when President-elect Bush knows our leader better and our politics.”

Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who also appeared on the ABC program, again defended his controversial decision last week to deny a visa to Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, who wanted to come to the United States to address the U.N. General Assembly.

“As chairman and responsible party” of the PLO, Shultz said, Arafat “must know about, condone and support the (terrorist) activities of Fatah,” which is led by Arafat and is the dominant group within the PLO.