Fine Touch

If President Reagan had written Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s U.N. speech himself, he could not have put a finer touch on their last official meeting as leaders of the superpowers.

The Soviet leader’s announcement on Wednesday that he will pull 500,000 Soviet troops out of the line no matter what the United States and its European allies do is not the end of the matter of force reductions.

But what a splendid beginning for President-elect George Bush, who will assume responsibility next month for negotiations to reduce the threat of tank and troop warfare that has haunted Eastern and Western Europe since the Cold War broke out.

The day also helped measure the progress that the United States and the Soviet Union have made since Reagan and Gorbachev first met in Geneva just three Novembers ago. In the days before that, when Reagan could still refer to Moscow as the capital of the Evil Empire, any such proposal would have been dismissed as some sort of trick.

The measure of the progress came after the speech and after the long, cordial lunch on Governors Island when Reagan returned to Washington. If the Soviets follow through on Gorbachev’s announcement, he said, “history will regard it as important--significant.”

Promising to reduce troop strength was the surprise in the speech, but it was remarkable in other ways, too. A few short years ago, Soviet leaders did not even think, let alone say, things like: “Today, the preservation of any kind of ‘closed’ society is hardly possible.” But Gorbachev said it Wednesday.