President to meet Kremlin head—-Washington

Press, 4 July 1985, Page 10

President to meet Kremlin head—-Washington

NZPA-AP Washington A wide-ranging summit meeting between the President of the United States, Mr Ronald Reagan, and the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had been set for late November in Geneva, officials of the Reagan Administration said yesterday. The agenda would probably feature arms control, the officials said, also including the Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan, American efforts to open Arab-Israeli talks, and developments in Central America. It would be the first such meeting between the United States and the Soviet Union in six years. Returning to the White House after greeting freed Americans who were held hostage in Lebanon, Mr Reagan was asked by reporters, “Are you going to have a summit?” He nodded his head, apparently in the affirmative. White House and State Department officials said that the meeting would be held November 19-21. “We believe we can and should resolve outstanding problems in all areas of the agenda before us,” the State Department said. “The United States is always ready to make its contribution.”

A senior State Department official said that although no agreements were ready to be signed at the summit meeting, there would be substantive exchanges between Messrs Reagan and Gorbachev. The Secretary of State, Mr George Shultz, was expected to discuss preparations for the Geneva meeting at a news conference today. Word of agreement to hold a summit meeting coincided with the announcement in Moscow of Eduard Shevardnadze’s appointment as Soviet Foreign Minister, succeeding Andrei Gromyko.

But Mr Gromyko, who has beeh shifted to the largely ceremonial post of President of the Soviet Union, was expected to play a key role in advising Mr Gorbachev during the transition, one American official said. Mr Reagan has exchanged messages with Mr Gorbachev, and had met Mr Gromyko at the White House late last year, American officials noted. Mr Shevardnadze is expected to meet Mr Shultz in Helsinki, Finland, on July 30-August 1, during the tenth anniversary of the 35nation agreement designed to ease East-West tensions. Mr Reagan has taken a

more moderate stance towards Moscow in recent months, urging an accommodation to reduce offensive nuclear weapons on both sides. In March, 1983, he denounced the Soviet Union as “the focus of evil in the modem world.” But arms talks in Geneva are dragging. Mr Reagan’s controversial “star wars” programme is an obstacle to progress. The Soviets, trying to sidetrack the United States research effort, say that it threatens to take the nuclear arms race to the frontier of outer space. The United States insists that research on anti-missile defences is legal, unstoppable, and an effort to keep up with Soviet activities in the same sphere. “I think there’s a great need for the two men to sit down and talk, and not be overly concerned with accomplishing a great deal at the initial meeting,” said Blair Ruble, an analyst with the Social Science Research Council, in New York, a private, largely centrist academic research institution. “I think Reagan had become such an anathema to the Soviet leadership that simply meeting him face-to-face will be an important step forward in U.S.-Soviet relations.”