U.S., Soviets Reach Pact on Grain Sales : Trade: U.S.S.R. will buy more than $1-billion worth of American farmers’ products annually under terms of five-year deal.

The United States and the Soviet Union have reached agreement on a new grain purchase that guarantees more than $1 billion of annual American grain sales to the Soviet Union.

The deal was announced in Washington today by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Clayton K. Yeutter and Trade Representative Carla Anderson Hills.

The five-year pact calls for minimum Soviet purchases of at least 10 million metric tons of U.S. wheat, corn, soybeans or soy meal exports to the Soviet Union each year. That is up from 9 million tons in the current pact.

The new agreement will succeed the current one, which expires next Dec. 31. Moscow will also have greater flexibility in choosing between purchasing wheat and feed grains on a year-to-year basis.

The new pact was agreed to at a meeting in Vienna between U.S. and Soviet negotiators and was hailed by Yeutter and Hills as “a welcome advance in the relations between the United States and the U.S.S.R.”

Julius Katz, deputy U.S. trade representative, said in Vienna, “We think this is a good deal, that it assures U.S. farmers of a stable market over the life of the agreement.”

Yeutter said only a few technical issues remained to be worked out. He said the agreement should be ready to be signed within a few weeks and possibly could be finalized at the U.S.-Soviet summit in June.

An Administration spokesman said the grain would be sold at “competitive” terms and dodged a question if that meant subsidized prices might be offered. The United States has routinely offered discounts on wheat.

U.S.-Soviet grain pacts stretch back to the mid-1970s. They help lock in exports for American farmers and protect the Soviet Union, the world’s biggest grain buyer, against supply disruptions.

Even when President Jimmy Carter suspended grain trade with the Kremlin in 1980 because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Soviet Union was allowed to buy the grain specified in the grain agreement.

Under the new pact, the Soviet Union will be required to purchase annually at least 4 million tons each of wheat and feed grain with a balance that can be fulfilled with purchases of wheat, feed grains, soybeans or soybean meal.

In any one year the Soviet Union can substitute up to 750,000 tons of one commodity for another.

At the first round of grain talks last December, the Soviet Union asked that the minimum purchase level be cut to 6 million tons of grain, but the United States said it could not accept anything lower than 9 million tons.