Soviets Seek to Reassure U.S. on Disputed Issues : Diplomacy: Official says arms-control problems will be ironed out. He asks for understanding on Baltic crisis.

Alarmed by suggestions from the Bush Administration that its much-improved relations with the United States are in danger, the Soviet Union sought Thursday to reassure Washington on the main points of contention--arms control, the Baltic crisis and the war in the Persian Gulf.

“The stress in Washington may now be on differences, but we believe the fundamental relationship is very sound, very strong, very dynamic,” Vitaly I. Churkin, the Soviet Foreign Ministry’s chief spokesman, said. “Both sides understand the crucial importance of preserving the achievements in international relations over the past few years.”

Churkin said that Soviet negotiators at the arms control talks in Geneva have instructions to resolve by the end of this month all problems in implementing the treaty reducing conventional armed forces in Europe and reaching agreement on reducing the superpowers’ strategic nuclear arsenals.

Churkin acknowledged that there are differences over the treaty on conventional forces, but he said that they would be resolved shortly. He predicted that the treaty, a landmark of postwar European diplomacy, would be ratified.

Although Moscow regards the Baltic crisis as an internal matter for the Soviet Union, Churkin said, “we fully understand Western concern . . . and we hope they will understand the situation in the Baltic republics in all its complexity . . . and appreciate our efforts to calm the situation and reach a political settlement.”

And Washington should have no doubts, he said, about continued Soviet support for the United Nations resolutions demanding Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait and authorizing force to expel it. “We would have preferred a peaceful resolution, but Iraq would not have it,” Churkin said. Any differences are “matters of emphasis, nothing more,” he said.

All those issues were discussed, Churkin said, during the visit to Washington of Alexander A. Bessmertnykh, the new Soviet foreign minister, and those talks “showed there is a considerable depth to the new relationship,” which should carry it through some troubled times.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III, testifying before a congressional committee on Wednesday, had said that the Administration will not submit the new treaty on conventional armed forces in Europe for ratification until a series of disputed issues is resolved. He warned that those problems jeopardize the strategic arms treaty and inevitably raise questions about the whole U.S. relationship with the Soviet Union.

“The important thing is that we were able, after Mr. Bessmertnykh’s visit, to keep on going, forging ahead and doing what we have to do in Soviet-American relations,” Churkin commented. “It is our intention, and we understand it to be the intention of the U.S. Administration, to advance Soviet-American relations further.”

Baker had been “rather premature” in calling the whole Soviet-American relationship into question, Churkin said; but, apparently demonstrating Moscow’s desire to minimize the conflict, he refused to be drawn into a further response to the critical U.S. comments this week.

At the same time, however, Soviet-American relations have become an increasingly controversial issue here among resurgent conservatives, who see Moscow selling out to Washington on crucial issues, particularly arms reduction, as debate grows over Soviet foreign policy.

The latest target, quite unexpectedly, is the treaty demarcating the Soviet-American frontier through the Bering Sea between Siberia and Alaska.

In a swinging attack published Thursday in the conservative newspaper Sovietskaya Rossiya, a retired army colonel, Yuri Katasonov, accuses former Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze of betraying Soviet interests, giving the United States valuable oil-rich regions and becoming a virtual American patsy in his five years as minister.

The treaty, signed in Washington during President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s trip to the United States last June, has not been submitted to the Supreme Soviet, the country’s legislature, for ratification and has been kept virtually secret here, the article alleges, suggesting that other agreements should also be examined.

“The treaty is only the tip of an iceberg of mysteries, all of which the Supreme Soviet must expose,” Katasonov said. “Why was the treaty signed in secret and why has it not been presented to the top legislative body? This graphically illustrates the contempt of Minister Shevardnadze for the Supreme Soviet.”

Churkin defended the treaty as a toughly negotiated, carefully balanced compromise that resolved a long-standing problem and cemented Soviet-American relations.