Reagan Assails Soviet Role in Regional Wars : Puts Peace in Five Areas on Summit List

UNITED NATIONS —  President Reagan, in a hard-line speech foreshadowing a tough approach to next month’s summit meeting, Thursday declared that a “central issue” in the talks will be a U.S. initiative aimed at resolving regional conflicts involving the Soviet Union in Asia, Africa and Central America.

With Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze sitting stonily in the audience at the United Nations, Reagan accused Moscow of pursuing policies of aggression in the Third World and outlined a plan for peace talks in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola, Cambodia and Ethiopia.

At the same time, he warned that U.S. support “for struggling democratic resistance forces must not and shall not cease” until these negotiations “result in definitive progress.”

The Soviet Union did not react immediately to Reagan’s proposed initiative. But Shevardnadze, in his own address to the United Nations several hours after Reagan spoke, also called attention to regional wars--and made it clear that his list differed from the President’s.

Without mentioning the United States by name, he accused Washington of having supported “barbarous aggression” in Vietnam, where he said the entire country had been “maimed . . . with napalm and chemical agents.”

Reagan unveiled his initiative during the United Nation’s 40th anniversary celebrations as part of a concerted White House effort to shift the focus of pre-summit discussions from arms control to Soviet global behavior and other U.S.-Soviet differences that he described as “deep and abiding.”

Heads of state and other leaders listened quietly to Reagan’s 30-minute General Assembly speech and did not interrupt, as is customary at the United Nations. When the President finished, the representatives of most Western countries and other U.S. allies applauded, while the Soviet delegates and many Third World representatives sat with their arms folded.

In brief references to arms control during the speech, Reagan accused the Soviets of violating arms control treaties and staunchly supported his Strategic Defense Initiative, the space-based missile defense research program commonly known as “Star Wars.”

He said the United States is carefully studying the Soviet proposal for a 50% reduction in strategic nuclear missiles and believes that within the proposal “there are seeds which we should nurture.” And in the remaining weeks before the summit in Geneva, he pledged, “we will seek to establish a genuine process of give and take.”

But he also indicated that he would press ahead with discussions of several issues that seem likely to antagonize Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev at the Nov. 19-20 summit.

According to the White House, “the heart of the President’s speech” was in his initiative to resolve regional wars in the Third World through a cooperative effort between Washington and Moscow. The Soviets are supporting Marxist-Leninist regimes against guerrilla movements in all five nations Reagan specifically mentioned.

Declaring that he was not challenging the “good faith” of Soviet leaders who have expressed peaceful intentions, Reagan nevertheless suggested that it is important to “weigh the record” of 118,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan; 140,000 Soviet-backed Vietnamese troops in Cambodia; 1,700 Soviet advisers and 2,500 Cuban troops in Ethiopia; 1,200 Soviet advisers and 35,000 Cuban troops in Angola, and 8,000 Soviet and Cuban personnel, including troops and secret police, in Nicaragua.

All of these conflicts, he said, “originate in local disputes, but they share a common characteristic: They are the consequence of an ideology imposed from without, dividing nations and creating regimes that are, almost from the day they take power, at war with their own people. And in each case, Marxism-Leninism’s war with the people becomes war with their neighbors.”

‘No Specific Reason’

At a briefing with reporters, Secretary of State George P. Shultz said the United States has “no specific reason” to believe that Reagan’s initiative will succeed in any of those five countries. But behind the scenes, Administration officials here suggested that the United States believes that the six-year war in Afghanistan has become so costly for Moscow that it may be looking for a way to withdraw its troops.

Reagan communicated his proposal for the negotiations to Gorbachev before his U.N. speech, according to a senior Administration official, who said he thought there was “a basis for cooperation.”

“We do believe that in one or two cases there is a self-interest on the part of the Soviet Union in bringing an end” to the conflicts, he said.

In the speech, Reagan said he is fully committed to support a regional peace process that seeks progress on three levels:

--First, negotiations among the warring parties in each country. The form of the talks may vary, he said, but negotiations--and an improvement in internal political conditions--would be essential to achieving an end to violence, the withdrawal of Soviet or other foreign troops and national reconciliation.

--Once the nations’ internal talks have begun to progress, U.S. and Soviet representatives should start to negotiate in a separate forum toward “verified elimination of the foreign military presence and restraint on the flow of outside arms.”

“It is not for us to impose any solutions in this separate set of talks,” the President said. “Such solutions would not last. But the issue we should address is how best to support the ongoing talks among warring parties. In some cases, it might well be appropriate to consider guarantees for any agreements already reached.”

Finally, if the first two steps were to prove successful, each country would be welcomed back “into the world economy so its citizens can share in the dynamic growth that other developing countries . . . that are at peace enjoy,” Reagan said.

‘Family of Nations’

He added: “Despite past differences with these regimes, the United States would respond generously to their democratic reconciliation with their own people, their respect for human rights and their return to the family of nations.”

Currently, the United States openly supports rebel forces trying to overthrow the Soviet-backed governments of Afghanistan and Nicaragua, and it has supplied covert aid to Cambodians fighting the Vietnamese soldiers--also Soviet-supported--who have overrun their nation.

In his appearance before the United Nations, Shevardnadze continued Moscow’s pre-summit emphasis on arms control. He read a message from Gorbachev in which the Soviet leader declared that to save mankind from the threat of a nuclear catastrophe “requires above all ending the arms race on Earth and preventing it in space.”

“Renewed efforts are also needed to extinguish regional hotbeds of tension and to eliminate the vestiges of colonialism in all its manifestations,” Gorbachev added in the message.

‘Touched Base’

Shevardnadze met with Reagan for 30 minutes at the President’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel suite later Thursday, but the two only “touched base on summit issues” and did not discuss their U.N. speeches, according to Administration officials.

Shultz and the Soviet foreign minister will discuss summit issues in more detail during a two-hour session today. Reagan, meanwhile, will conduct separate bilateral sessions with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl this morning before flying back to Washington.

In his speech, Reagan said he looks to a “fresh start” in U.S.-Soviet relations when he meets with Gorbachev in Geneva. Differences should be resolved peacefully, he said, but there must be “candid and complete discussions of where dangers exist” and a review of the reasons for the current level of mistrust.”

The President, who has been severely criticized by some conservatives for not emphasizing Soviet arms control violations, declared: “We feel it will be necessary at Geneva to discuss with the Soviet Union what we believe are their violations of a number of the provisions in all of these agreements.”

Kosygin Quoted

In defending the “Star Wars” proposal, which the Soviets bitterly oppose, Reagan cited a quote attributed to then-Soviet Premier Alexei N. Kosygin 18 years ago by the official Soviet news agency Tass. Asked about a moratorium on the development of an anti-missile defense system, Kosygin was quoted as saying:

“I believe that defensive systems, which prevent attack, are not the cause of the arms race, but constitute a factor preventing the death of people. . . . Maybe an anti-missile system is more expensive than an offensive system, but it is designed not to kill people but to preserve human lives.”

In addition, Reagan, a long-time critic of the United Nations, said that on the anniversary of the world body “we acknowledge its successes” but must not “close our eyes to this organization’s disappointments.”