President Reagan clashed with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev Sunday on human rights at the outset of their five-day summit after the President received a friendly but restrained welcome on his first visit to the capital of communism.
Gorbachev protested that Reagan failed to understand ”where the human rights issue stands” in the Soviet Union under his reformist leadership after the President challenged him, Soviet spokesman Gennady Gerasimov said.
He said Gorbachev also responded to the challenge with a suggestion that U.S. and Soviet lawmakers hold regular meetings to discuss human rights and other issues. Reagan agreed to consider the proposal.
The President and his wife, Nancy, arrived in Moscow in brilliant afternoon sunshine after flying from Helsinki, Finland, a rest stop along the route from Washington.
The Soviets did not fill the streets of Moscow with the huge ”rented”
crowds provided for favored visiting leaders. But thousands of people turned out in the warm, late-spring weather to give the Reagans what appeared to be a spontaneous and enthusiastic welcome as their motorcade sped to the Kremlin.
Cheered by this reception, the President and First Lady later surprised Muscovites by making an unscheduled walk along one of the capital`s more colorful thoroughfares, Arbat pedestrian mall.
They were caught in a crush of hundreds of Soviet citizens out for a Sunday stroll along the pedestrian mall, which has been restored to its 18th Century splendor over the last year and is lined with sidewalk cafes, shops and art galleries.
Soviet KGB security police, yelling and pushing American reporters and members of the public alike, turned the outing into a mob scene, and U.S. officials in some cases pushed back. The President appeared to be taken aback by the uproar, and Mrs. Reagan also seemed alarmed.
Afterward, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said the Reagans were
”excited” by the warm welcome they got on the Arbat. ”I don`t know what the citizens thought of the Reagans, but the Reagans thought the people were just great,” he said.
The impromptu gesture recalled Gorbachev`s own unexpected action in Washington last December when he jumped out of his limousine to shake hands with Americans lining his route to the White House.
Reagan, the first U.S. president to visit the Soviet Union since Gerald Ford went to Vladivostok in November, 1974, and Gorbachev are meeting for the fourth time in three years.
Their hope of being able to sign an agreement to reduce their strategic nuclear arsenals by 50 percent has eluded them (talks at Geneva are stalled on a variety of issues), but they greeted each other with the familiarity of old friends in a televised arrival ceremony in the Kremlin Great Palace.
They traded Russian proverbs and expressed hope for continued improvement in Soviet-American relations before sitting down with only their interpreters and note-takers for an hour and 11 minutes of talks, 26 minutes more than had been scheduled.
Reagan, who ruffled the Soviets by speaking out forcefully on the human rights issue Friday before an audience in Helsinki, plunged into the topic at the outset of the meeting.
Fitzwater said Reagan told Gorbachev that human rights has ”pride of place” on his agenda because of the importance the American people attach to the subject and because it weighs significantly in the way Americans look at other societies.
Neither Fitzwater nor Gerasimov went into detail on Reagan`s comments on human rights. But later, White House aides said Reagan presented 14 human rights cases that he hoped Gorbachev would look into. They include people who have had immigration difficulties, have complained of religious persecution or are being held as political prisoners in Soviet jails.
One of the 14 people on Reagan`s list is Abe Stolar, the Chicago-born son of Russian parents who has sought to return to the United States after more than 50 years in the Soviet Union. Stolar, whose father was killed during the Stalin-era purges, is seeking permission to go to the U.S. with his children and grandchildren. Reagan has taken a personal interest in the case.
But Gerasimov said Gorbachev told Reagan that human rights is ”a two-way street” and that the U.S. has its own problems in this field. He mentioned that some American Indians have come to Moscow to present a petition to Reagan about their own human rights grievances.
”Since you have problems in this area and we do, maybe it is better to start a businesslike discussion without introducing sensational elements and a propaganda spirit,” the Soviet spokesman said.
He said Soviet officials ”know our drawbacks” in this area and are trying to correct them. ”But we don`t like it when someone from outside is trying to teach us how to live,” he said.
Just yards from the Kremlin wall, 30 Jewish activists held a peaceful demonstration Sunday evening to support Reagan`s backing for human rights. Soviet police did not interfere with the half-hour rally.
Despite the clash of views on human rights, both spokesmen sought to represent the initial meeting as cordial.
Gerasimov described a ”serious and businesslike atmosphere, friendly.”
Fitzwater quoted Reagan as saying he had an ”affable and cordial conversation” with Gorbachev in the gilded, ornate St. Catherine`s Hall of the palace.
The two spokesmen addressed the world`s news media in a huge conference room at the modernistic Mezhdunarodniya (International) Hotel, which the Soviets have turned into a summit press center.
Though the summit is not likely to produce any breakthrough agreements, more than 5,000 reporters are covering it, the largest media turnout the Soviets have ever faced.
Reagan and Gorbachev set up joint working groups to discuss human rights, arms control and bilateral and regional issues. The working groups will report to the leaders during the summit in an effort to produce some concrete results before the talks end.
Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze held their own discussion on these topics Sunday evening.
While Gorbachev and Reagan talked, Raisa Gorbachev, the wife of the Soviet leader, escorted Nancy Reagan on a tour of the Kremlin. The two women at times held hands and smiled frequently at each other, but occasionally they betrayed signs of the iciness that marked their meeting in Washington last year.
At the earlier public arrival ceremony, reporters asked Gorbachev if it was likely the two leaders would hold a fifth summit to sign a strategic arms treaty before Reagan leaves office next January.
”Quite possible, this is quite possible,” Gorbachev responded.
In welcoming Reagan, Gorbachev offered a highly positive assessment of their previous meetings. ”As we see it, long-held dislikes have been weakened; habitual stereotypes stemming from enemy images have been shaken loose.”
He told Reagan he could look forward to ”hospitality, warmth and good will” from the Soviet people. And, in a reference to the controversy his reform policies have aroused within Soviet society, he said the Soviet people are now ”heatedly discussing how their country can best progress.”
Alluding to Reagan`s fondness for Russian proverbs, Gorbachev said he wanted to add one more to the President`s collection: ”It is better to see once than to hear a hundred times.”
In response, Reagan produced yet another Russian proverb in a badly mangled accent: ”Rodilsiya ne toropilsiya,” which means ”It was born, it wasn`t rushed.”
The President also hailed achievements made at previous meetings between two leaders. ”Despite clear and fundamental differences, and despite the inevitable frustrations that we have encountered, our work has begun to produce results,” Reagan said.
But he said both are aware that ”tremendous hurdles” remain.
The Reagans were met at Vnukovo Airport by Soviet President Andrei Gromyko and his wife, Lydia. Several hundred American diplomats and business people who live in Moscow turned out to cheer the Reagans and wave small American flags. But the Soviet welcome was limited to the official party, except for a handful of airport employees who clustered behind Air Force One and watched the ceremonies intently.
Reagan and Gromyko reviewed a Soviet military honor guard after a 60-piece Soviet army band played the two national anthems and then broke into a march.
