Reagan Sees Changes in Soviet Stance : Gorbachev Moving to Make Nation ‘Less Threatening,’ He Says

President Reagan, declaring that his negotiations with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev have produced “serious movement and even some breakthroughs,” said Thursday he is convinced that the Soviet Union now seeks to become a less threatening nation than it was under earlier leaders.

“I think there’s been a change,” Reagan told reporters in a nationally televised news conference, his first in more than six months and probably the last of his presidency.

Asked whether he believes Gorbachev is genuinely working to make the Soviet Union “a less threatening country,” Reagan said: “Yes, I do. I think he recognizes that their massive (military) buildup has been responsible for the great economic crisis there in the Soviet Union.”

He said the United States is eager to cement friendlier relations “if it can be definitely established that they no longer are following the expansionist policy that was instituted in the Communist revolution . . . and certainly there are indications that we can see, that we can anticipate, bringing such a thing about.”

“I do think there is evidence they don’t like being the pariah, that they might want to join the family of nations, and join them with the idea of bringing about or establishing peace,” Reagan said.

And in response to a question about whether the two countries could again be allies, as they were in World War II, he said: “That is all dependent on them.”

Reagan spoke a day after his fifth and final meeting with Gorbachev, an informal luncheon on Governors Island in New York harbor that also included President-elect George Bush.

Broad Range of Questions

As he entered the final six weeks of his two terms in the White House, Reagan also fielded questions on a range of other issues: He expressed hope that Bush would continue to oppose new taxes, declared that his failure to balance the federal budget was a result of Congress’ inability to cut domestic spending and voiced willingness to discuss the release of American hostages in the Middle East with responsible representatives of Iran.

And he said that the best part of his eight years in the White House has been helping to improve the state of the nation’s economy, while the worst has been sending American servicemen into combat.

It was U.S.-Soviet relations, however, and the prospects for a historic change in the structure of international affairs, that dominated the session. And Reagan--while reiterating his insistence on the need for vigilance and military strength--maintained an enthusiastic tone.

He noted that after Wednesday’s lunch, he gave Gorbachev a photograph of their first summit meeting three years ago, when the two leaders took a celebrated walk down to the shore of Lake Geneva.

“We have walked a long way together to clear a path for peace,” the inscription read.

“The path remains open,” Reagan said, “and the pace of peace continues.”

Referring to the massive earthquake Wednesday in Soviet Armenia that led Gorbachev to cut short his U.S. visit, Reagan also said he had conveyed to the Soviet leader “the deep sympathy of the American people and our anxiousness to provide any humanitarian assistance we possibly can.”

Reagan’s endorsement of Gorbachev’s central foreign policy argument--that the Soviet Union has shifted the basic aims of that policy--marked a long evolution in the President’s views.

In his first news conference as President in 1981, Reagan excoriated the Soviet Union and warned that its Communist leaders historically had declared their willingness to “commit any crime, to lie, to cheat” if they believed it would advance world communism.

On Thursday, Reagan said that those days appear to be gone. “This was their own philosophy,” he explained. “That’s what they said. I think there’s been a change.”

The President did add some cautionary notes, however. Reading a prepared statement, he said that venturing into the uncharted waters of more cordial relations with Moscow “means our responsibilities have grown not less--but more--serious. We must remain resolute and without illusion, and we must speak candidly about fundamental points of difference. We must especially maintain our military strength.”

But in his off-the-cuff answers to reporters’ questions, he betrayed less hesitance about hailing Gorbachev as an entirely new kind of Soviet leader.

“I have never met with one of those leaders that was comparable to this man or had the approach that he has,” he said.

But he quickly added his favorite Russian proverb--”Trust, but verify”--and said: “I don’t think that he would gamble on believing that he shouldn’t protect his own interests also.”

In an unusual move, the President announced that Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, have invited him and his wife, Nancy, to visit them in Moscow as private citizens after Bush’s Jan. 20 inauguration and that he invited the Gorbachevs to visit the new Reagan home in the Bel-Air section of Los Angeles.

The President said he believes that the changes in the Soviet Union have come about in large part because the country’s economy has stagnated under the orthodox Communist rule of earlier leaders.

“Many of the things they preached were proven unsound, and that’s why their economy is in such trouble,” he said.

Policy Support Seen

Asked to assess Gorbachev’s political future, Reagan said that any leader who seeks broad changes runs political risks. But he added, “I think it is very evident that the people of the Soviet Union are on his side. They want this perestroika and glasnost that he has talked about very much.”

Perestroika is the Russian word for “reconstruction” and refers to Gorbachev’s economic reforms; glasnost means “openness,” a word Gorbachev has used to describe his political reforms.

Reagan again praised Gorbachev’s proposal, made at the United Nations on Wednesday, to reduce the size of the Soviet armed forces by 500,000 troops and to disband six of 15 tank divisions now stationed in Eastern Europe. But he said the United States should not match the move with a cutback of its own “because this still leaves them with a superiority in the amount of conventional weapons that they have.”