U.S., Soviets Continue Negotiations

GENEVA--U.S. and Soviet teams continued talks on medium-range nuclear missiles and President Reagan said the Americans would present new proposals today, when this round of talks originally had been scheduled to end.

Maynard Glitman and Lem Masterkov led the U.S. and Soviet negotiators in yesterday's meeting. Soviet spokesman Alexander Monakhov said they talked for about 90 minutes at the Soviet Mission, but he gave no details.

Max Kampelman and Yuli Vorontsov, chiefs of the two delegations, had a luncheon meeting yesterday to discuss procedure.

During an appearance in the White House briefing room in Washington, Reagan said: "I welcome the statement by Soviet Secretary-General Gorbachev on Saturday that the Soviet Union will no longer insist on linking agreement on reduction in INF (Intermediate Nuclear Force) to agreements in other negotiations."

Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, proposed that the super-powers reach an agreement apart from other arms negotiations on eliminating medium-range missiles from Europe in five years.

Reagan said he would bring U.S. negotiators home for consultations at the end of this week and, "following these discussions in Washington I will send a team back to Geneva to take up once again the detailed negotiations for an INF reduction agreement."

He said he had told the American team to begin presenting the U.S. proposals today and added, "I hope that the Soviet Union will then proceed with us to serious discussion of details which are essential to translate areas of agreement in principle to a concrete agreement."

Among issues to be resolved, he said, "none is more important than verification. We will continue to insist that any agreement will be effectively verifiable."

U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms negotiations in Geneva are in three areas: medium-range missles; long-range, or strategic weapons; and the fields of defense and space.

Gorbachev's offer reversed the Soviet position, taken after his Iceland summit with Reagan last October, that agreement on medium-range nuclear forces must be tied to the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative.

The space-based defense project, commonly called "Star Wars," has been a major sticking point since the Geneva talks began two years ago. Moscow has insisted the United States curtail research, but Washington refuses to accept limits.

In the latest Soviet attack on Star Wars, a speech delivered yesterday by the chief Soviet delegate to the 40-nation Geneva Conference on Disarmament, Yuri Nazarkin said: "whatever its 'defensive' labels, [it] is designed to alter the balance of forces to the advantage of the United States."

He reaffirmed the new Soviet position that a deal on medium-range missiles no longer is conditional on agreement about Star Wars.

Pravda, the Soviet Communist Party newspaper, quoted Gorbachev yesterday as calling a medium-range weapons agreement a "tremendous" step toward others on arms reduction and regional conflicts.

His proposal would affect the 316 U.S. Pershing 2 and cruise missiles deployed in Western Europe and Soviet SS-20s. Western officials estimate 441 SS-20s are deployed in the Soviet Union.

Gen. Sergei F. Akhromeyev, the Soviet army chief of staff, said Monday that 243 were aimed at Europe. The rest presumably are in Asia.

Under the Gorbachev proposal, each nation could retain 100 warheads on its own territory. The Soviet missiles would be deployed in Asia.