THE MALTA SUMMIT : Summit Speeds Work on Arms, Economics : Superpowers: Bush says he ‘couldn’t have asked for’ a better meeting. Gorbachev sees a road to lasting peace.

President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, ending their two-day Malta summit on a note of optimism and cooperation, agreed Sunday to speed up the timetable for concluding arms reduction agreements and work toward integrating the Soviet Union into the international free-market economy.

Gorbachev, who responded favorably to several arms control and economic proposals Bush set forth in the opening session Saturday, said he agreed with the President that their next summit should be held in the second half of June in the United States and that, at that time, they should agree on the basic provisions for a treaty to slash strategic nuclear arms arsenals by 50%.

He called Bush’s proposal for moving toward a total ban on the production of chemical weapons “an interesting initiative that raises the possibility of rapid movement” toward that goal and suggested that he also agrees with Bush’s proposal for speeding up the timetable for reducing conventional forces in Europe.

“Therefore, I highly assess and evaluate what we have done here,” Gorbachev declared.

Bush, who spoke warmly of his personal relationship with Gorbachev, said that he “couldn’t have asked for” a better summit, that the two leaders had narrowed their differences on several matters and that the climate the summit talks had produced for American investment in the Soviet Union was “an extraordinary plus” for U.S.-Soviet relations.

Soviet officials are apparently still considering Bush’s suggestion that they participate in an international conference next fall to draft a treaty to control global warming. The Soviets had no advance word that Bush planned to raise a major environmental initiative at the summit and therefore did not bring along any environmental experts to help Gorbachev analyze the proposal, Soviet officials said.

U.S. environmental officials said that Soviet agreement to participate in a global warming treaty-writing session would be a major advance and are hopeful that they will have a response soon from the Soviet side.

In answer to a question at a joint press conference on the Soviet cruise liner Maxim Gorky, where they held their final summit talks, Bush also indicated for the first time that he believes Gorbachev has renounced the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine, which provides for Soviet military intervention when a Warsaw Pact government is in danger and which the Kremlin invoked in 1968 in brutally crushing the Prague Spring reform movement in Czechoslovakia.

Asked specifically whether he thought Gorbachev has renounced the doctrine, Bush said that as the Soviet leader “talks about democratic change . . . that certainly lays to rest previous doctrines that may have had a different approach.”

Although the two leaders disagreed on Soviet policy in Central America, and Bush pointed out they also have differences over policies in other parts of the world and still must resolve differences on arms control issues, they found common ground on most economic, political and arms control issues raised during their more than eight hours of talks.

Gorbachev, addressing Bush’s call for an end to the Cold War, said that he had assured the President that the Soviet Union would never start a “hot war” and that the two of them had agreed that “the world leaves one epoch of Cold War and enters another epoch. . . . This is just the beginning. We’re just at the very beginning of our road--long road--to a long lasting, peaceful period.”

Many characteristics of the Cold War, he said, “should be abandoned . . . most of all, force, the arms race, mistrust, psychological and ideological struggle, and all that. All that should be things in the past.”

The stormy weather that disrupted their first day’s schedule and caused them to cancel a dinner and another summit session subsided Saturday, but winds and waves remained so strong that they decided to hold their final talks aboard the cruise ship tied up in Marsaxlokk harbor. They had been scheduled to meet on the U.S. missile cruiser Belknap, anchored in rougher waters 1,000 yards away, where Bush bunked in the admiral’s quarters during the summit.

Bush flew from Malta to Brussels, where he briefed West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl on the summit at a dinner Sunday evening. Today, he will brief the Western allies at a meeting at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels.

On the sensitive question of possible reunification of East and West Germany, both Bush and Gorbachev chose their words carefully. Neither endorsed nor opposed reunification, and both cautioned against any outside intervention in the political relationship of the two Germanys.

“I made clear to President Gorbachev that we for our part did not want to do anything that is unrealistic and causes any country to end up going backwards or end up having its own people in military conflict, one with the other,” Bush said. “And so I think we have tried to act with the word that President Gorbachev has used, and that is with caution. . . .”

Gorbachev warned against any “artificial acceleration” of changes in the political relationship between the two German states, and he said that in today’s reality, they are both sovereign states.

However, Gorbachev suggested that the rapidly changing political map of Europe should result in a drastically altered security alliance. He said that neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact should remain military alliances “but rather political-military alliances and later on just political alliances . . . in accordance with the changes on the Continent.”

While Bush said the United States and the Soviet Union “stand on the threshold of a brand new era” of relations, he consistently said Washington should stand firm in its support of NATO as a military alliance, which he credits with being the major factor in preserving peace between the East and West.

Gorbachev also pressed Bush to consider negotiating an agreement to reduce naval forces. But the President said that while the United States has narrowed its differences with the Soviet Union on arms control issues, naval forces is not one of them, and he is “disinclined to think it is an area” where progress on reducing arms would be made any time soon.

The Soviet Union’s role in Central America--the one issue that recently has caused the most trouble in U.S.-Soviet relations--also was a major bone of contention at the Malta summit.

Although Bush rejected a reporter’s suggestion that he has accused the Soviet Union of sending arms to the leftist rebels in El Salvador, the President emphasized he does have differences with Soviet policy in the region and has “demonstrable evidence” that the Soviet-backed Sandinista government of Nicaragua has shipped arms to the Salvadoran rebels.

Gorbachev said he had informed Bush that the Soviets had ceased sending arms to Central America and also had “firm assurances” from the Nicaragua government that it had not sent arms into El Salvador.

Bush said that while he accepts Gorbachev’s explantion, he believes the Sandinistas have misled the Soviets, “and so we have some key differences in how we look at this key question.”

The two leaders agreed that differences over Nicaragua can best be resolved by the elections scheduled to be held by the Nicaraguan government in February.

Despite their differences, Bush and Gorbachev emphasized they had many areas of agreement and exchanged comments of mutual admiration that would have been almost unthinkable a short time ago.

The President, declaring he has a good personal relationship with Gorbachev, said there is enormous respect in the United States for the reforms he is pressing in the Soviet Union and for the way he has advocated peaceful changes in Eastern Europe.

Gorbachev said he welcomed his personal relationship with Bush, and that the atmosphere of “friendly, straightforward,” talks enabled him to make good progress at the summit.

* GAINS FOR GORBACHEV

Friendlier U.S. relations is the message to Moscow. A4

* CENTRAL AMERICA MOVE

The Soviets promised to help curb Latin arms shipments. A5

* A SLEEPER

Networks are left groping for words, Howard Rosenberg reports. F1