U.S. Urged to Give Soviets Most-Favored Trade Status

A high-level group of East-West economic specialists called on the United States on Wednesday to extend most-favored-nation trade status to the Soviet Union.

Such a move, the group said in a report, would “provide a sound basis for business and finance” between the superpowers.

Under most-favored-nation status, Soviet exports to the United States would be subject to the lowest tariffs and fewest restrictions allowed under law.

The report, the result of 18 months’ work by experts from capitalist and socialist countries, was issued by the Institute for East-West Security Studies, which is holding its annual meeting here.

Its aim, according to co-chairmen Anthony M. Solomon, former undersecretary of the U.S. Treasury, and Abel G. Aganbegyan of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, is to present specific ways the West and East can take advantage of reforms introduced by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

The report was signed by 63 economic experts from 17 countries, and one of the experts, Ivan Berend, president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, told a news conference that the conclusions are of great importance.

He said that as the threat of military confrontation in Europe recedes, the danger arises of an economic gap between East and West. The report’s recommendations, which are intended to address that gap, include the following:

-- Enable the reforming socialist societies--so far, Hungary, Poland and the Soviet Union--to begin integrating with West European countries, particularly the 12 members of the European Community and the six neutrals that make up the European Free Trade Assn.

-- Give the Soviet Union observer status in GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and encourage Soviet contacts with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

-- Assist Poland and Hungary in restructuring their sizable long-term debts.

-- Open Western schools, factories and financial institutions to Eastern trainees for on-the-job training.

-- Allow Eastern countries to buy Western technology, so long as they establish that such materials will not be used for military purposes.

The study by the institute concluded that the Eastern states “must institute tough, unpopular changes in order to enter the world economy. . . .”