Bush Reassures Moscow on East Europe : Diplomacy: The U.S. won’t use the reform movement to destabilize the Soviet Union, the President cables Gorbachev.

President Bush, continuing his preparations for next month’s summit with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, sent Gorbachev a cable expressing his support for “calm and peaceful” change in Eastern Europe, his spokesman said Friday.

Bush also continued a series of meetings with U.S. experts on Soviet policy.

Bush’s cable Thursday night was a response to a message he received last weekend from the Soviet president that expressed similar sentiments.

“The President indicated his support for the changes in Eastern Europe and the reforms under way in the Soviet Union,” Bush’s spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, said. “He said the United States wants a calm and peaceful period of change in Eastern Europe as Poland, Hungary and East Germany seek to implement their reforms. The President said he believes these historic steps will make a positive contribution to a Europe that is whole and free.”

Bush’s cable was designed to reassure Gorbachev that the United States does not plan to take advantage of the rapid reforms in Eastern Europe to try to destabilize the Soviet Union. The Administration’s hope is that such reassuring messages can help Gorbachev fend off his internal critics and continue his reform program.

Administration officials believe that Gorbachev can hold on to power as long as the Soviet military and the nation’s other major institutions of power do not see the reform process as a fundamental threat to the Soviet system.

Meanwhile, in a message apparently intended to pay heed to concerns of the Administration’s conservative supporters, Vice President Dan Quayle warned Friday that approaching technological developments and financial limits “will profoundly affect the U.S.-Soviet military competition.”

While reduced defense spending may bring the size of the Soviet military into balance with the United States, “Soviet forces may well become more competitive in qualitative terms,” Quayle said in a speech to the National Defense University in Washington.

“Thinking hard about basic questions of strategy is all the more necessary as we enter an era that in some ways will be more complex and challenging than the era now passing,” he said.

Focusing on other critics, meanwhile, White House aides increasingly have tried to fend off suggestions from Democratic leaders in Congress that Bush has been too passive in his summit preparations. They insist that Bush will not go to the Malta summit with a set of new initiatives and that he does not expect the summit to lead immediately to new agreements with the Soviets.