Better Relations Goal of Summit, Shultz Says

WASHINGTON — President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev have agreed they want a “more constructive relationship” to emerge from their November summit, Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today.

President Reagan sees the summit “as an opportunity to deepen our dialogue and lay the basis for practical steps to improve U.S.-Soviet relations,” Shultz told a news conference.

Reagan and Gorbachev will meet for the first time Nov. 19 and 20 in Geneva in the 11th postwar summit between the superpowers, the White House and Kremlin formally announced earlier.

Shultz said a “get-acquainted session” between the two leaders would be “worthwhile” and “it’s quite sensible for these two men to meet” at this juncture.

Expressing the Administration’s cautious outlook for the talks, Shultz said he didn’t expect to measure progress in the talks with a “score card for success.”

No Breakthroughs Expected

Other officials said they do not expect any breakthroughs in the critical area of arms control, over which U.S. and Soviet negotiators in Geneva have been deadlocked for months.

Shultz said both men agreed to have the meeting “some time ago and now they have agreed on the time and place for the meeting.”

“I might say they both have agreed--that is, they have told each other--they would like to see a more constructive relationship emerge from the meeting,” he said.

Shultz said he expects to meet the new Soviet foreign minister, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, twice between now and the summit to help prepare for the Gorbachev-Reagan meeting.

“There will be an extensive preparatory effort. We will not have a situation where two people just get together and say hello with no preparation. We want to see the meeting prepared for thoroughly, and so do the Soviets,” he said.

Shultz said the meeting is part of an “ongoing process” in relations between the superpowers. “I would deliberately stay away from words like ‘turning point,’ but certainly we regard this as a very important meeting and we will be prepared for very serious substantive discussion there, and that’s the way the President will be approaching it.”

He denied that Reagan, who had initially invited Gorbachev to Washington for the summit, had “given in” to the Soviets by agreeing to go to Geneva. Both sides wanted the meeting in their respective capitals, he said.