START Accord Still Uncertain, Bush Cautions

President Bush warned Tuesday that, despite the latest flurry of diplomatic activity, there is no certainty that a START agreement will soon be signed with the Soviet Union.

In a day when he mixed business with baseball, the President made his comment in a joint news conference with Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney at the SkyDome stadium just before the annual All-Star Baseball Game.

Bush said he was pleased that Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev is sending his foreign minister and a team of arms control experts to Washington to try to speed agreement on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

But Bush said this does not mean that the two sides will reach agreement on the treaty soon.

“I don’t want to overstate my anticipation on this because I’m not sure we can hammer it out before I see Mr. Gorbachev for our bilateral meeting in London at all. . . . We’ll wait and see,” he said.

Asked if there would be any more compromise in the U.S. position, Bush replied: “I’m just not saying. When you go into a card game, you don’t (get) into a negotiating session, you don’t say, hey, by the way, we want to compromise on points A, B, D or E.”

On another issue involving the Soviet Union, Prime Minister Mulroney said that the Western industrialized nations expect Gorbachev to come to London next week with a plan for strenuous economic reforms in the Soviet Union.

“He is coming to London . . . as a man who has demonstrated great leadership instincts,” said Mulroney. “. . . But he’s got very serious problems that can only be addressed by fundamental reforms in his economy.”

If Gorbachev shows that he intends serious reforms, the prime minister went on, “my expectation is that there will be a positive and constructive response” from the Western industrialized nations at the London summit later this month.

The meeting in Toronto was described as a baseball summit in the Canadian press. It was, in fact, a long day of baseball for Bush. He honored Hall of Famers Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams with presidential citations in Washington earlier in the day before escorting them to the All-Star Game aboard Air Force One.