Soviet Military Adviser Caps U.S. Trip With Bush Meeting

Soviet Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, a top military adviser to President Mikhail A. Gorbachev, said Friday that the Soviet Union will come up with a way to combat the B-2 bomber if the U.S. produces the radar-evading aircraft.

Akhromeyev, who capped a visit to the United States by meeting with President Bush in the Oval Office, also told the National Press Club that East European nations are free to “become the kind of nations they wish to become.”

Neither Bush nor Akhromeyev spoke with reporters about their meeting, but the White House said in a statement that the discussion included talk of U.S.-Soviet arms control negotiations.

Bush reiterated his desire for early agreement and also restated his support for Gorbachev’s domestic reforms.

Akhromeyev’s speech and question-and-answer session was the first by a senior Soviet official at the Press Club since Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev in 1959.

He told an audience that included Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the trip in which he gave historic testimony to Congress had encouraged him that Soviet relations with the United States will continue to improve.

‘Threat Still There’

Still, he said that although the decrease in tension between North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Warsaw Pact countries was “a tremendous accomplishment . . . the military threat, unfortunately, is still there.”

He has traveled this week to Stanford University at the invitation of former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, to meetings with private financial leaders in Chicago and New York and to a farm in the Midwest.

The Soviet marshal, wearing his Red Army uniform with 11 rows of ribbons, went from the Press Club speech to a private meeting at the White House with Bush, Vice President Dan Quayle, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

At the Press Club, the retired Soviet military chief of staff discounted Bush Administration statements that the B-2 Stealth bomber will give the United States a military edge over the Soviets.

‘Action, Reaction’

“For every action in life there is a reaction,” he said through an interpreter.

“So if the creation, development and deployment of the B-2 is an action, in one way or another there will be some sort of reaction from the Soviet Union,” he said.

The House this week voted to suspend production of the B-2 until the Pentagon scales back the high-priced program and said the Administration must show that the Stealth can successfully evade radar detection and penetrate Soviet airspace before production resumes.

Asked whether the Soviet Union would move to squelch democracy movements in Poland and Hungary if those countries move toward independence from the Kremlin, Akhromeyev said Eastern Bloc nations “can be the kind of countries they wish to become.”

Other Responses

Answering questions put to him in writing, Akhromeyev also:

-- Reiterated the Soviet stance that the United States should “take steps” with the Soviets to end fighting in Afghanistan.

-- Expressed support for the “appropriate process” taking place in Nicaragua toward elections monitored by international groups.

-- Joked that his testimony last week before the House Armed Services Committee probably didn’t have an effect on the House vote to trim Pentagon spending.

“I had no intention of interfering in the internal affairs of the United States, or especially the Congress,” he said to laughter. “I think your Congress is the kind that doesn’t even let the American people interfere with its internal affairs.”