Bonn Offers to Sweep Away Key Obstacle to Arms Pact : Reagan Sees Way Open for Accord

President Reagan, responding to Bonn’s surprise offer to scrap its Pershing missiles, predicted today that the superpowers soon “can wrap up an agreement” to eliminate medium-range missiles around the world if the Kremlin erects no new artificial barriers.

In a speech in Los Angeles to the Town Hall of California civic organization, Reagan also challenged the Soviet Union to bring a spirit of glasnost , or openness, to its military affairs.

Reagan had planned his speech as an overview of East-West relations, but he found his intentions overtaken by events as West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl earlier today offered to dismantle 72 aging Pershing 1-A missiles standing in the way of a superpower arms accord.

‘Wrap It Up Promptly’

The President, hailing the offer from Bonn, said, “(The United States and Soviet Union) can wrap up an agreement on intermediate-range missiles promptly.”

The President also urged the Soviets to move quickly on a U.S. proposal for a 50% reduction in long-range missiles.

Reagan criticized the Soviets for their “last-minute demand” several months ago that the Pershings--their nuclear warheads under U.S. control--be included in any U.S.-Soviet pact on medium-range forces and insisted that position “was without foundation.”

Reiterating the U.S. view that the German intermediate nuclear force missiles were “third-country” weapons outside the scope of the superpower negotiations in Geneva, Reagan said the announcement today by Kohl had “removed even this artificial obstacle from consideration.”

Substance or Rhetoric

“We are therefore hopeful that the Soviet Union will demonstrate that there is substance behind the rhetoric they have repeated so often of late: that they genuinely want a stabilizing INF agreement,” he said. “If so, they will move to meet our proposals constructively rather than erect additional barriers to agreement.”

The President’s speech appeared to be a new attempt to take the offensive in the long-running public relations struggle with the Kremlin. Mikhail S. Gorbachev has scored some major victories over Reagan, with recent polls in Europe showing that a majority of people believe the Soviet leader--rather than Reagan--is a champion of peace.

The President pointed out that it was the United States--not the Kremlin--which originally proposed elimination of medium-range missiles in Europe and a 50% cut in strategic weapons.

Reagan, who in recent weeks has questioned the sincerity of Gorbachev’s glasnost policy, seemed to move to greater acceptance that some changes were taking place in the Soviet Union.

But he said “we also need to see more openness, a departure from the habits of secrecy that have so long applied to Soviet military affairs.

“First, publish a valid budget of your military expenditures--just as we do. Second, reveal to the Soviet people and the world the size and composition of the Soviet armed forces. Third, open for debate in your Supreme Soviet the big issues of military policy and weapons--just as we do.”

Missing from the speech were Reagan’s old assaults on the Soviet Union as “an evil empire” and “a Mickey Mouse system” and his previous doubts about Soviet leader Gorbachev’s sincerity is pursuing openness.