Bush, Gorbachev Will Meet at Sea for Informal Talks : Diplomacy: The Mediterranean meeting Dec.2-3 is expected to clear the way for an arms summit in 1990.

President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev will meet aboard U.S. and Soviet naval ships in the Mediterranean on Dec. 2 and 3 for an unstructured, informal conference intended to pave the way for next year’s arms control summit.

The meeting, announced simultaneously on Tuesday by Bush at the White House and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze in Moscow, will be the first between the two presidents since Bush took office last January.

It will offer the two leaders “a chance to put our feet up and talk,” Bush said.

Shevardnadze, while also saying the session will be relaxed, added that it should “contribute to broadening the changes taking place in the Soviet-American relationship.”

Occurring at a time of dramatic ferment in the once-monolithic Soviet Bloc of Eastern Europe, the shipboard sessions are likely to focus on the pressure for economic and political reforms in the Soviet Union and Eastern and Central Europe, as well as on the continuing turmoil in Central America and Afghanistan, U.S. officials said.

However, with Bush and Gorbachev planning to meet in a formal summit conference in late spring or early summer next year, the White House saw little chance that arms control would be given a central role next month. Rather, by focusing on other matters, the two leaders will free up the agenda for their next meeting, which will deal with weapons reductions, particularly long-range nuclear weapons.

The warships have not yet been chosen, nor has a decision been made on whether they will be cruising in international waters or tied up in port for the meetings.

Cracked one Pentagon official: “I’m trying to get the Love Boat into the Mediterranean.”

More likely, officials said, are two similar cruisers, stationed perhaps off Naples, the home port of the U.S. 6th Fleet, or, one official said, near Spain. Gorbachev is scheduled to be in Rome, making the first visit of a Soviet leader to the Vatican, just before he meets Bush.

A high-visibility superpower conference offers unique political opportunities for both Bush, who has been criticized for failing to respond to dramatic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and for Gorbachev, who has been juggling to meet consumer demands while fending off critics of his twin reform programs, glasnost and perestroika .

Bush can demonstrate a willingness to engage in superpower politics and can encourage and assist the long-sought shifts in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev can return home with a show of acceptance from the United States and, possibly, a renewed commitment to arms control that could eventually help him divert precious rubles from military to domestic spending.

“Any time you have a President (of the United States) meeting with a president of the Soviet Union, as a catalyst to an arms control summit, it’s a plus,” said one Administration official. “The American people like to see it. There’s no downside to it.

“Any time there’s dialogue, it puts people in a good frame of mind,” the official said. “There’s a feel-good thing about it. This has a rolling effect. It’s not just a media event here or in the Soviet Union. It has an international feel to it.”

Soviets Impatient

In Moscow, officials were growing impatient with the delays in resuming arms control negotiations after Bush took office, said Stephen Cohen, director of Russian studies and professor of politics at Princeton University. “They’d begun to refer to the Administration as ‘the long pause,’ ” he said.

A renewal of the superpower dialogue will allow Gorbachev to “prove once again to his people that he can bring a recalcitrant American President to a meeting,” said Cohen.

Bush said: “Our talks will be informal in character, designed to allow us to become better acquainted with one another and to deepen our respective understanding of each other’s views. Neither President Gorbachev nor I anticipate that substantial decisions or agreements will emerge.”

Bush played down the prospects for measurable progress, telling reporters at a White House news conference: “There’s not going to be an agenda or meeting (that) could be seen to fail or succeed on whether we make agreements” on U.S. aid for the struggling Soviet economy.

“That’s not what this meeting is about. . . . There’s nothing off the table, nothing on it,” he said.

What if Gorbachev springs a new arms control proposal on him?

“He’s free to bring anything he wants,” Bush said.

“The meeting is not being set up to achieve agreements. I would hope we’d see eye to eye on certain things when we get through, and maybe more narrowly define, more precisely define, what differences we have,” Bush said. He added:

“We’ll simply sit down, and I’ll give (him) my views on the changes that are taking place in Eastern Europe, and certainly I’m most interested in getting his.”

The President took pains to portray the meeting in less-than-dramatic terms, insisting that it would not be a summit conference.

“I’ve got to make that point over and over again,” he said. “ ‘Summits’ take on a definition, an expectation of grand design and grand agreements, and that’s not what this is.”

Secret Talks

In late August, as initial, secret U.S.-Soviet discussions of a meeting were under way, senior U.S. officials argued that barring an unforeseen international agreement of some sort, the time was not right for Bush and Gorbachev to meet. They said a conference without concrete results could be read as a failure. But, they acknowledged, the failure of the two leaders to meet over the course of an entire year would also bring risks.

At the same time, Bush has been anxious to establish a personal relationship with Gorbachev, even though he and his aides said for months that they did not want a meeting just for the sake of getting acquainted. He last met Gorbachev on Dec. 7, 1988, when the Soviet leader visited New York to address the U.N. General Assembly. Bush was then President-elect and Ronald Reagan was President.

“I’ll tell you what changed my mind--it was consultation with our allies, the rapidity of change in Eastern Europe, the emergence of democracies in this hemisphere, and this concept that I just didn’t want to, in this time of dynamic change, miss something, something that I might get better firsthand from Mr. Gorbachev,” Bush said of the shift in his approach.

“I don’t want to have two gigantic ships pass in the night because of failed communication,” he said.

According to senior Administration officials, the genesis of the meeting was in the President’s visit in July to Poland and Hungary, when officials there encouraged him to meet Gorbachev and express his support for the reforms in Eastern Europe.

On July 19, Bush penned a note to Gorbachev, proposing an informal meeting.

Gorbachev replied “immediately and enthusiastically . . . (that) this was a good idea,” Bush said. The formal Soviet response reached Washington in early August, setting off an exchange of letters between the two leaders and discussions by their senior aides of possible dates, places and informal agenda items. A final agreement came in early October.

Several officials said it was Bush’s idea that the leaders meet on ships in the Mediterranean.

A non-summit-at-sea can be accomplished “without too much fanfare. . . . There’s a relatively few number of people,” Bush said.

KEY ISSUES IN CURRENT U.S.-SOVIET RELATIONS

President Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev will have a lot to talk about when they meet in December. The 10 months since they last met have been filled with “dynamic change” in Eastern Europe, Central America and the Soviet Union itself, as Bush noted. Here are some of the likely topics: Soviet Economy

What are Gorbachev’s plans for coping with his nation’s severe economic problems? His ability to deal with increasing consumer demands and sagging industrial production is seen as central to his political survival. But whether Washington should help bail him out is a major policy debate.

Eastern Europe

Bush hopes to determine how much Gorbachev will be encouraging reform throughout the region or whether he will swing toward those trying to put on the brakes. Bush also is trying to clarify at what point active U.S. support for democratic changes would produce a Soviet backlash. Washington has approved aid to reform-minded Poland and Hungary but not to hard-line East Germany, which is racked by nearly daily pro-democracy demonstrations.

Arms Control

Bush said there will be no detailed talks on this issue. But the leaders are expected to review conventional forces and long-range missiles. Those issues will be the focus of next year’s formal superpower summit in Washington. The Warsaw Pact, led by the Soviets, has made new proposals on verifying cuts in conventional arms in Europe. Gorbachev last week offered to pull nuclear-armed submarines from the Baltic Sea in a step toward a “nuclear-free” Europe; at right are some of the affected nations.

Central America and Afghanistan

The United States has complained repeatedly about East Bloc arms shipments to Nicaragua and the transfer of weapons from there to El Salvador’s leftist guerrillas. Moscow recently suspended military aid to Nicaragua and is trying to become a peace broker in the region. In Afghanistan, the Soviets have been protesting U.S. military aid for the Muslim rebels attempting to overthrow the pro-Soviet government.

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