U.S. to Press War on Terrorism at Tokyo Summit

WASHINGTON —  The United States is pressing its European allies for a new joint offensive against terrorism and plans to make the issue a central concern at next month’s Tokyo summit of industrial democracies, President Reagan’s chief of staff said Sunday.

In the wake of last week’s U.S. air strike against Libya, White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan contended that other Western governments increasingly support the Reagan Administration’s tough approach on terrorism--even if some still object to military action.

“I think that at the summit in Tokyo, which is coming up in a matter of a couple of weeks, this will be one of the timely subjects that we will discuss with the other world leaders,” Regan said.

‘Isolate This Person’

“And I think that it’s better if we can work with our allies, as we are now trying to do, to see what further steps can be taken to isolate this person,” he said, referring to Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi.

State Department officials said the Administration has told European governments since the raid that one way to forestall further American military action against Libya would be to institute joint political and economic sanctions against Kadafi.

A series of meetings is planned this week among counterterrorism officials of the seven nations participating in the Tokyo summit to discuss possible joint measures, one said.

“We are now talking with our allies, telling them they have made a poor decision in not supporting us in this endeavor,” Regan said bluntly in an NBC television interview with columnist John McLaughlin.

Asked whether European governments were becoming more supportive of the U.S. position, Regan said: “I think you will gradually see that. (West German Chancellor Helmut) Kohl, for example, has been much more supportive after the fact. . . . I think you may see that in the other allies gradually as time goes on.”

Of the United States’ major allies, only Britain has offered forthright support for the air strike against Kadafi’s Tripoli headquarters and four other military bases. West Germany, Italy and Canada have said they support tough measures against Kadafi but expressed misgivings about the Administration’s tactic. France, which refused to allow U.S. Air Force bombers to cross its territory on their way from bases in Britain to Libya, has been publicly critical.

State Department officials said the Administration expects that one positive side effect of the air strike would be to push the Europeans toward tougher non-military measures.

The day before the U.S. raid, European Communities foreign ministers met to discuss joint political sanctions against Kadafi but failed to agree on any major actions. But when they met again after the raid, Secretary of State George P. Shultz noted, the Europeans quickly agreed on a call for “concrete action” against terrorism.

“The European view of terrorism is really much stronger than it was a week or so ago,” Shultz said last week.

A Shultz aide said the Administration wants the Europeans to stiffen both political and economic sanctions against Kadafi--expelling Libyan diplomats or closing their embassies entirely, denying landing rights to Libya’s government-owned airline, and ultimately considering a joint boycott of Libyan oil.

He said that Administration analysts believe economic sanctions could fatally weaken Kadafi’s hold on power, if only they can be made effective. “That could give the (Libyan internal) opposition real impetus,” he said.

British, Italian and West German officials have all said that their governments favor tougher measures but have also stressed that economic sanctions are virtually impossible to enforce.

“We are going to be taking pretty strong efforts during the next week to persuade all our European allies to try and act in concert for some more severe non-military measures,” British Defense Secretary George Younger said Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week With David Brinkley.”

“We would like to see strong economic action of all kinds, including the closing of People’s Bureaus (Libya’s name for its embassies), restriction of visas, and all sorts of other actions in concert with our allies,” Younger said. “What we would not be in favor of is economic sanctions as such imposed by one or two nations but ridden over or ignored by all the others, because that is a hopeless policy and has never worked.”

“It’s never been known for economic sanctions to work,” he said. “There is no single instance anywhere, as far as I know in recent history, where they’ve worked.”

His comments echoed those of Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, who told a news conference Saturday that while Italy believes Libya’s embassies should be more closely restricted, “We maintain that economic sanctions are totally useless.”

Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser in the Carter Administration, proposed a naval blockade of Libya as the only kind of economic sanction that can be effective.

“Mine the ports,” Brzezinski said on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley.” “Say that Libya has committed a belligerent act against the United States and therefore in retaliation the United States is closing Libya down. . . . This I think will have--would have had, in fact--a political impact on Libya.”

“We would be mining the ports. We’d be seeding mines on the airfields. We’d be jamming their telecommunications,” he said.

White House chief Regan agreed that the the United States could enforce sanctions unilaterally “only by a massive blockade of (Kadafi’s) ships” but said the Administration would prefer to work on joint sanctions first.

‘He Is Not Immune’

Regan said that the Administration believes its air strikes against Libya succeeded in weakening Kadafi’s political position “because his own people now realize that they’re targets for the first time. The realization has come to him (Kadafi) for the first time that he is not immune to our striking back.”

“There were attempts by some in the armed forces of Libya to have an uprising” after the raid, he said, “but I think that’s subsided.”

But a former national security adviser to Reagan, Robert C. McFarlane, said he doubts that the air strike has strengthened the Libyan opposition. “I think, basically, that Kadafi’s continuity is pretty much assured,” McFarlane said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Regan said that he expects the current upsurge in terrorism to end but could not predict when.

“We think that gradually this will grind to a halt,” he said. “It always has in history.”