Reagan ‘Just Being Realistic’ on Pact, Aide Says

WASHINGTON —  President Reagan was “just being realistic” when he said there was probably not enough time to complete a new U.S.-Soviet strategic offensive arms agreement for signing at the next summit in late May or early June, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said Friday.

But Fitzwater, slightly softening Reagan’s pessimism, also cited the more positive portions of Reagan’s remarks, which were made in a Washington Post interview published Friday. The spokesman noted that Reagan said that if there was sincerity on both sides--”and I think there is”--then a U.S.-Soviet treaty could be signed before he leaves office next January.

A senior Administration official emphasized that “we are still committed to negotiating this treaty, but the goal is a good treaty, not a fast treaty. . . . We’ll be pushing ahead. And I think that’s the message. If a treaty is ready for the summit, it will be signed there.”

Most U.S. officials agreed with the President’s assessment, but some wondered why he said it now. It takes the deadline pressure off U.S. negotiators, but “it risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy” by slowing the work within the government toward a new accord.

Conservative Republicans in Congress, however, are certain to welcome Reagan’s comments. The legislators have expressed concerns about the complex verification procedures that would be required in such an agreement and have warned against hasty negotiations toward a new pact.

In a related development, a senior Soviet official briefing foreign reporters in Moscow said the Soviets might open the door to a compromise on the long dispute over missile defenses in space, an issue that the Soviets have said must be resolved at the same time that the strategic offensive agreement is achieved.

As reported in the New York Times, the Soviet official--who could be neither identified nor quoted directly under the briefing ground rules--said the Kremlin might drop its objection to the testing of components of anti-missile weapon systems in space.

Until now, the Soviets have insisted that such tests be limited to so-called subcomponents, or smaller pieces. At one point, they demanded that such tests be conducted within the four walls of a laboratory on Earth.

According to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, an anti-missile system consists of three components: the radar network, the rocket interceptors and the rocket launchers. Testing of components, or systems that could substitute for components, was barred except at fixed land sites. The Soviet official said Moscow still insists on a narrow interpretation of the ABM treaty, one that would restrict testing in space. But if Moscow allows space tests of components, it will go a “significant step,” as one U.S. official said, toward bridging the gap between the Soviet position and the broad interpretation of the treaty favored by the Administration.