THE MALTA SUMMIT : Bush Expected to Reject Any Soviet Appeal to Curb Navy Deployments : Military: The Kremlin is growing impatient with U.S. reluctance to negotiate on seagoing arms.

The wave-tossed setting of the U.S.-Soviet summit this weekend might seem perfect for extending arms control negotiations into the relatively untouched field of naval weaponry--President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev meeting aboard two nuclear-capable warships here at the crossroads of European sea routes.

And Moscow has signaled its growing impatience for curbing naval armaments. They are the only major category of weapons now exempted from the superpower dialogue. As Moscow sees it, they are also an easy route for U.S. circumvention of nuclear and conventional forces treaties now being negotiated.

Yet Bush’s decision to precede the Malta summit with a highly visible tour Friday of the carrier Forrestal, symbol of America’s naval might here, was a not-so-subtle signal that he is determined to reject any Soviet appeal to curb the U.S. Navy.

Gorbachev, during his visit to Rome preceding the summit, proposed discussions with the United States and Italy aimed at eliminating permanent U.S. and Soviet naval bases in the Mediterranean Sea. He is widely expected to reiterate here Soviet calls for opening naval arms talks, perhaps urging a ban on nuclear weapons on surface warships throughout the world.

And as if to set the stage for such an offer, the number of Soviet warships now in the Mediterranean has been halved, to four fighting ships and two support vessels. Pentagon officials concede that Soviet naval deployments in the Mediterranean are now unusually low but say that this is temporary.

Bush, however, in a 15-minute speech to the Forrestal’s officers and crew Friday, ignored the opportunity to discuss the subject despite widespread speculation about it among members of the U.S. 6th Fleet. Instead, the President--himself a carrier pilot during World War II--lauded the U.S. Navy as the “defender of freedom” here in Europe’s “Middle Sea” and throughout the world.

The argument advanced by the Bush Administration, the Navy and all postwar American governments, is that the United States is a maritime power located between two great oceans and dependent on sea lanes for trade and communication. By comparison, the Soviet Union is a land power with few ice-free ports.

As a result, an Administration official said, secure sea lanes are as vital to the United States as the Soviets’ internal railroad lines are to the Kremlin. Without such sea lanes, U.S. reinforcements could not be sent to Europe en masse in time of crisis or conflict.

The United States must also rely on mobile naval forces for use in Third World brush-fire wars, and on ballistic missile submarines, which provide the most invulnerable of its strategic nuclear deterrent systems.

Finally, the United States is superior to the Soviets in the quality of its warships and their staying power at sea. In categories such as aircraft carriers capable of handling high performance planes, the Soviets have no comparable vessel.

Faced with the possibility of a summit proposal from Gorbachev on naval arms, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said last week, “I have absolutely no reason to believe that it is in our interest to enter into any kind of arms control measure” involving naval weapons.

The United States “is now and will want to continue to be the preeminent naval power in the world,” he said.

But the Soviets have mounted a determined campaign to “rein in” the U.S. Navy with a series of proposals to constrain naval weapons. These proposals, together with a shrinking Soviet navy and the pressures on the Navy engendered by Pentagon’s rising budget constraints, may bear fruit for the Kremlin within the next few years--especially if U.S.-Soviet relations generally show further improvement and current arms talks move into their next phases.

Among the numerous Soviet proposals, compiled by Michael L. Ross in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine, are:

* Withdrawal of both navies from the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas and the Indian Ocean.

* Decommissioning of 100 Soviet submarines in exchange for taking five to seven U.S. aircraft carriers from service.

* Establishing “sanctuaries” for missile submarines in various seas and the Indian and Pacific Oceans where they can patrol without being hunted by anti-submarine vessels.

Many of these ideas would primarily benefit the Soviets, but they argue that such asymmetry if justified because--as the superpowers reduce their nuclear and conventional forces in coming years--the overwhelming naval superiority of the United States and its allies in Europe and Japan will tip the overall military balance against Moscow.

The expected START treaty, which will reduce long-range offensive nuclear weapons by about 50%, could be circumvented by deployment of nuclear-tipped cruise missiles on submarines and surface ships, for example.

The Soviets contend that such cruise missiles are potentially more threatening to them than to the United States because their coastlines are longer and U.S. technology is superior.

Similarly, the elimination of medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe under the recent U.S.-Soviet Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty could be bypassed by putting more nuclear bombs aboard carriers such as the Forrestal in European waters, the Soviets complain.

Some experts, including William M. Arkin of Greenpeace, the anti-nuclear environmental organization, argue that “the first steps should be elimination of sea-based nuclear forces intended for ocean combat and land-attacks in conventional wars.”

At a minimum, according to Oleg Grinveski, head of the Soviet delegation to the conventional forces talks now under way in Vienna between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the two sides should “extend confidence-building measures to naval forces.” These measures at present consist of on-site inspections by each side of military troop maneuvers by the other alliance.

So far, however, the U.S. Navy has opposed even this idea lest it lead eventually to significant naval arms limitations.

Times staff writer Melissa Healy, in Washington, contributed to this story.