Crowe Sees Gorbachev as Visit Ends : Kremlin Leader Says Trip Shows Shift Toward Partnership

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev told the visiting chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff on Wednesday that his tour of the Soviet Union shows that the two superpowers are starting to see one another more as partners than adversaries.

Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. had sailed on a Soviet guided missile cruiser for a day, gone aboard a nuclear submarine in the Arctic port of Murmansk, visited a nuclear missile silo outside Moscow, sat in the cockpit of the newest long-range bomber, code-named Blackjack by NATO, and watched the Red Army try out new tactics in exercises in Byelorussia during a 10-day visit that he said had helped sweep aside misunderstandings between the two military establishments.

And when Crowe met Gorbachev in the Kremlin on Wednesday at the conclusion of the trip, the Soviet leader told him that his extensive tour of super-secret military and naval facilities was itself “the weightiest argument that our relations with the United States have risen to a new level of maturity.”

“The very fact that you have visited the Soviet Union and visited military facilities and units demonstrates that we are moving from the notion of enemies to the notion of partners,” Gorbachev said.

“I believe that in the plans made by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we are still considered to be adversaries. But the process is going along new lines, and that is extremely significant.”

Crowe, warmed by his cordial reception and impressed by the openness of the people he had met, told Gorbachev, “I now see that Soviet people are very much like Americans.

“They put great emphasis on their families and homes,” Crowe continued. “They want a better future for their children and decent security. They are very dedicated to their country.

“These are all traits that Americans respect. Perhaps I had to visit the Soviet Union to understand this.”

Crowe, speaking later at a press conference, said that he agrees that Soviet-American relations are improving, but he added that there are “still differences in our points of view . . . namely on the arms control issue.”

“The atmosphere for discussing the differences has improved markedly,” Crowe said. “I believe that we now have an environment in which we can talk candidly, that we can ask the kinds of questions that are important, that we can talk without rancor or emotion.”

His visit came as Soviet and American negotiators resumed talks in Geneva on reducing their strategic nuclear arsenals after a seven-month suspension to give the Bush Administration a chance to reassess the U.S. position. The two countries are also discussing reductions in conventional forces in Europe, the elimination of chemical weapons and restrictions on nuclear testing.

Crowe said that recent proposals by the United States and the Soviet Union for reducing nuclear and conventional arms made him optimistic about new agreements, but he cautioned that the pace should not be forced if flawed treaties would result.

While he had discussed the negotiations with his Soviet counterpart, Gen. Mikhail A. Moiseyev, the chief of the Soviet general staff, and with Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, Gorbachev’s military adviser, Crowe emphasized that he had come to get a better understanding of the Soviet Union and its military, not to negotiate.

“The most constructive thing that I did on this trip was to have personal conversations with the Soviet leadership,” Crowe said, “and with those, we have been able to sweep aside some of the misunderstandings between us and clarify some of our differences.”

He had discussed at length what Gorbachev calls the Soviet Union’s new defense strategy of “reasonable sufficiency,” which would mean cutting the Soviet armed forces back to only what it needs to defend itself and releasing the other resources to develop the country and expand its economy.

“There is change afoot in this country, politically and militarily,” Crowe said, adding that he is willing to wait and watch for the implementation of the new policies. “As soon as a policy is announced, some people look out of their window and say, ‘I don’t see it.’ These things take time, but I hope we will see the evidence.”

Crowe had signed an agreement aimed at preventing the accidental outbreak of hostilities between the two countries. Moiseyev described the pact as “a momentous occasion in the history of our relations.”

Its broad outlines had been discussed when Akhromeyev, then chief of the general staff, went to the United States last year as Crowe’s guest and when Frank C. Carlucci, who was then secretary of defense, visited Moscow as the guest of Gen. Dmitri T. Yazov, the Soviet defense minister.

With Moiseyev sitting beside him, Crowe described the Soviet armed forces as “competent, skilled, well-trained, durable, determined, very patriotic, with a good sense of humor and personable, and I return home with great admiration for them.” To his mind, he said, the Soviet servicemen he met were very much like their American counterparts.

Crowe said that he has also come to understand how the Soviet Union’s experience in World War II, in which an estimated 20 million of its people were killed, has helped shape the modern Soviet psyche, particularly the leadership’s determination that never again will the country be invaded and never again will a foreign adversary put socialism at risk.

“I saw what a searing experience the war was,” Crowe said.