Baker’s Malta List: Latin Arms Flow, East Europe Reform : Summit: He says the U.S. wants to see <i> perestroika</i> succeed. Arms control will also be on the agenda.

On the eve of President Bush’s departure for the Malta summit, Secretary of State James A. Baker III declared two key priorities in relations with the Soviet Union: continued reform in Eastern Europe and a cut in Soviet-made arms flowing to Central America and conflicts in other Third World areas.

Although promoted at first as an “unstructured, agenda-less meeting,” Baker said that at the two-day summit this weekend, Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev will seek to accelerate the arms control talks by considering obstacles in the way of nuclear and conventional force cuts.

Baker indicated more clearly than ever before that the United States puts the success of Gorbachev’s perestroika --his program of reform and restructuring--efforts high on its own agenda.

“We want reforms in Soviet domestic, foreign and defense policy to succeed,” he said at a news conference at the White House. “We believe the reformers are for real. We want to see a more open, stable and democratic Soviet Union within an open, secure and free Europe.”

“The real question” is not whether perestroika will succeed or fail, given the staggering difficulties it confronts, he added, but, “Do you engage the Soviet Union in a search for mutual advantage in this time of uncertainty? And our answer . . . is a resounding yes.”

But Baker also laid down markers on what would be acceptable and unacceptable Soviet use of force in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union.

“Any attempts to forcibly intervene and prevent continued reform (in Eastern Europe) will be extremely destabilizing and dangerous,” he declared flatly.

In the Soviet Union, he indicated that the United States would be understanding if, for example, martial law was used to prevent ethnic groups, such as Armenians and Azerbaijanis, from killing each other. But it would be “far different” and “we would have great trouble,” he warned, if peaceful dissent was forcibly suppressed by the Kremlin.

Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), in a prepared statement, called on Bush to make “a more meaningful response” to Gorbachev and the East European reform process than he has so far. He also renounced the Ronald Reagan Administration’s interpretation of the anti-missile treaty of 1972, which was intended to promote “Star Wars” defense research.

At the White House news conference, Baker also addressed the issue of reunification of West and East Germany, which is likely to come up at Malta.

“There should be no trade of neutralism for unity,” Baker said, and the “liberal democratic character” of West Germany should not be diluted in any confederation or other arrangement.

He did not disagree with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s speech Tuesday proposing confederation after free elections. He also said that the time is not ripe for convening a grand conference of all European powers, as well as the United States and the Soviet Union, to consider German reunification.

“Some very clear steps that have to be taken first,” he said, include free, fair and multi-party elections in East Germany and movement toward a free economic system in that country.

Baker repeated Administration complaints about Soviet arms being sent to Nicaragua and other “Third World clients,” again calling Soviet behavior in Central America “the biggest obstacle to an across-the-board improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations.”

‘Cold War Relic’

Moscow’s performance in this area is “more appropriate to (former Soviet leader Leonid I.) Brezhnev than Gorbachev,” he said, adding that Soviet arms flow is “a Cold War relic” and in Central America amounts to “throwing fuel on the fire.” The current rebel offensive in El Salvador was made possible with Soviet arms, he charged.

Baker recalled that the Soviets promised to use their influence to stop the arms flow from Nicaragua to El Salvador but that “either the Nicaraguans are lying to the Soviet Union or the Soviet Union is lying to us. We prefer to believe it’s the former.”

He also rejected in advance any Gorbachev effort at Malta to make a superpower trade of Central America for Afghanistan, such as a halt in U.S. aid to the Salvadoran government in exchange for a halt in Soviet aid to the Afghan government.

“There is no moral equivalency,” he said, in helping the “freely elected democratic government” of El Salvador and helping the Afghan regime “that was imposed at the point of bayonets” after a Soviet incursion in 1979.

Baker also reiterated that this “non-summit meeting,” as he called it, “is not an arms control summit. We will not be conducting negotiations.” Bush and Gorbachev are scheduled to meet specifically on arms issues in late spring or early summer in Washington.

“But the President will want to discuss the overall progress on arms control and what preparations we might make to accelerate further progress,” he said.

He indicated that the strategic nuclear arms talks, which aim to slash offensive weapons by half, will get more time in the Malta talks than the negotiations to cut conventional forces in Europe.

Treaty Goals

Bush has said that he “hoped” a strategic arms treaty would be ready for signing at the “arms control summit.” He also set May as a time goal to finish a conventional forces agreement between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact. U.S. officials believe that both timetables are overly ambitious, particularly with the NATO allies still squabbling among themselves on details of the proposal.

The senior Administration official later said Bush and Gorbachev probably will discuss “a timetable for resolving the major outstanding issues” at the strategic arms talks in anticipation of their next meeting. And “it would be logical for a general discussion about what next” in the conventional forces talks, he added, suggesting a program for cuts in troops beyond those presently envisaged.

In the current conventional forces talks, the two sides broadly aim to reduce Soviet manpower and ground equipment by half or more, while NATO forces, including U.S. troops in Europe, are cut by about 10%. At the end of the reductions, in three to five years, both of the military alliances would be at equal levels of 275,000 troops.

In outlining a five-point U.S. agenda for the Malta talks, Baker said much has changed since the meeting was proposed last July, including the essential repudiation of the “Brezhnev doctrine” by Moscow when it decided not to stand in the way of East European reform. This so-called doctrine, used to justify the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, held that no Communist country could move out of the Communist orbit.

The meeting comes at a “unique time in U.S.-Soviet relations,” he said, in which the two sides will “search for mutual advantage.”

He then focused on “five areas” that, he said, Bush will very likely discuss with Gorbachev. But Eastern Europe was cited first and got the most weight in his prepared remarks.

“No negotiation will be held, no deals made, no limits set” on Eastern Europe, he emphasized. But Bush wants to stress two things about the region, he said. The first is that “continued change and reform is the only path to long-term legitimacy and stability in the region,” Baker said.

“Change is not necessarily destabilizing,” he added. “Nevertheless, we need to help manage this change in a way that encourages the reform process to proceed and succeed. That means, in part, letting the Soviets know that we will not seek unilateral advantage.”

The other thought that Baker stressed on Eastern Europe is that “we firmly believe that any attempts to forcibly intervene and prevent continued reform will be extremely destabilizing and dangerous.”

The second of the five “areas” is Soviet behavior in Third World conflicts, and the third is arms control, Baker said. The fourth, he said, is that Bush wants to hear Gorbachev’s views on the future of perestroika and glasnost and how he will seek to make permanent his expressed commitment to the rule of law and guarantee of human rights.

Fifth, Baker said, Bush will want to hear Gorbachev’s views on the state of the Soviet economy and his efforts toward making the Soviet Union “more compatible” with the world economy, including decontrolling prices, permitting more property to be privately owned and conversion of the ruble to other currencies.