News ANALYSIS : Surprise Summit a Test of Post-Cold War Ties

President Bush’s surprise summit meeting with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev next week will be both a landmark and a critical test in the new, cooperative relationship of the world’s two nuclear superpowers.

The meeting in Helsinki, which Bush announced Saturday, marks the first summit in 45 years to be convened as a cooperative effort to help solve a global crisis.

“The last time we had a summit in the middle of a crisis was World War II,” noted a State Department official who is working on preparations for the meeting. “This is the first crisis since then that we’ve been on the same side.”

At the same time, the Helsinki conference will pose the first serious test of the new and closer working relationship that Bush and Gorbachev agreed to forge at their last summit talks, at the President’s weekend retreat last June.

“I’ve had in mind . . . more frequent meetings,” Bush told reporters on Saturday. “We both agreed up at Camp David that this kind of informal, unstructured format might be very good in a world where there are so many changes. And so, it’s a good chance to test that now.”

Bush emphasized that the one-day summit’s agenda will include the entire range of U.S.-Soviet concerns, as well as the Persian Gulf crisis. Other Administration officials confirmed that such issues as the negotiations on conventional force reductions in Europe, peace talks in Afghanistan and a truce in Cambodia are expected to take up some of the two presidents’ time.

But even Bush acknowledged that the crisis over Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait would probably be Topic A--a fact that could make this summit dramatically different from all earlier U.S.-Soviet meetings.

“I don’t think there’s any clear parallel or precedent for this,” said Raymond Garthoff, a former U.S. ambassador who worked on earlier summits. “In the past, regional conflicts more often stood in the way of holding a summit, because we saw ourselves ranged against the Soviet Union, at least indirectly.

“The crisis in the gulf is the first post-Cold War crisis,” he said. “We have seen unusual cooperation with the Soviet Union--both bilaterally and in the U.N.--because in this one, we both favor a solution that would help restore the global order.”

Thus, he said, the Helsinki summit will test the ability of the United States and the Soviet Union to combine their influence in pursuit of a common goal.

It may also reveal whether Bush and Gorbachev can work together under crisis conditions as partners.

“The relationship with Gorbachev is very important to him,” a former White House aide said of the President. “He clearly feels that he would like to see Gorbachev frequently, and perhaps especially at a time of international crisis.”

And Bush, for his part, made a point of noting Saturday that Gorbachev was reported to be “very enthusiastic” about the Helsinki meeting.

At Camp David last June 2, Bush and Gorbachev spent most of a day in seclusion, talking--with no neckties, no fixed agenda and no pressure to reach specific agreements--about the U.S.-Soviet relationship. Both men said afterward that it was the best meeting they had ever had with each other, and Bush said he hoped to re-create that atmosphere in Helsinki.

That may not be so easy this time, since a major part of next week’s agenda will be to strengthen U.S.-Soviet cooperation in the gulf--and, one official suggested, to issue a joint statement strong enough to impress Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Bush said he is “very pleased” with Gorbachev’s position on the Middle East crisis so far. “We seem to be in general agreement on a lot of issues,” he said. The Soviet Union has supported U.S. moves to enforce U.N. economic sanctions against Iraq, and Gorbachev publicly scolded Iraq’s Hussein last week.

But other officials said the Administration has been pressing gently for more Soviet action, and they said they expect Bush to apply more such pressure at the summit.

In particular, one official said, the Administration has asked Moscow to withdraw the 193 Soviet military advisers and several thousand civilian technicians in Iraq.

“The Soviets are still standing on the position that they (the advisers and technicians) are not explicitly covered by the U.N. resolutions, but we have told them that it is highly inappropriate for them to remain there,” he said.

Officials also said they plan to reassure Gorbachev that the deployment of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia is not intended to shift the balance of power in the Middle East against the Soviet Union, as some Soviet officials have complained.

Gen. Vladimir Lobov, military commander of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, told the Tass news agency last week that the deployment of what will soon be 100,000 U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia “drastically changes the strategic balance in the region” and could pose an obstacle to the completion of an agreement on reducing conventional armed forces in Europe.

Bush and other Administration officials said that one of their major hopes for the summit is to clear away several logjams in the conventional arms talks. That pact is scheduled to be completed this fall, in time for a November meeting of the 35-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).

The Administration is under considerable pressure to reach agreement in the conventional arms talks because two key allies, France and West Germany, are anxious for the CSCE meeting to occur on schedule--France because the meeting is to be held in Paris, and West Germany because the meeting is expected to consecrate its unification with East Germany.

“We could get into a scrape with our allies on that,” a former Bush aide noted, “and this is the worst possible time to get into a scrape with our allies, when we’re trying to keep everyone together on Iraq.”

Three major issues are holding up agreement on a conventional arms pact, officials said: limits on aircraft, where the Soviets have asked for greater reductions in the West; verification procedures, where the Western countries want stricter rules, and a limit on Soviet forces as a percentage of the total Warsaw Pact. The limit on forces has become a sticky problem as the Communist alliance has disintegrated.

Officials said the two presidents are also expected to talk about Afghanistan, where Soviet-backed President Najibullah recently rebuffed U.S. requests that he step down as part of a peace agreement. Also on the agenda is the fate of Cambodia, where the United States, the Soviet Union and other major powers have agreed to a new truce plan.

That won’t leave room for much else, a former Administration official noted. The current talks on reducing U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons, for example, are not expected to get much time, he said.

“A day isn’t very long,” he said. “Let’s add it up. The gulf takes at least two hours. They have to talk about Europe, German reunification, conventional arms, START (strategic arms reduction talks). They have to talk about Afghanistan and Cambodia.”

“It’ll be pretty streamlined,” agreed a State Department official who is helping to plan the meeting. “A morning session, a lunch, an afternoon session.”

The Helsinki summit may help Bush and Gorbachev set a new record for the number of superpower meetings held in a single year. If they meet in Helsinki next week and meet again in Paris in November, as planned, that will make three summits this year.

The summit will mark a new speed record, too--only eight days from Saturday’s announcement to the actual event.

Asked about the problems of planning a meeting on such short notice, the State Department official laughed ruefully.

“Most of us didn’t even know about it until now,” he said. “We start organizing tomorrow.”