Reagan Predicts Missile Cuts in '88

WASHINGTON--President Reagan said last night there is a reasonably good chance the superpowers can agree in Moscow next year to eliminate 50 percent of their strategic nuclear weapons, the longrange missiles that are the most dangerous arms on Earth.

He made the evaluation of prospects for such a far-reaching agreement in a television interview with anchormen from the four major networks four days before Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrives for a summit and the signing of a treaty to ban intermediate-range nuclear missiles, known as INF.

Reagan said opposition to the INF treaty among conservative Republicans, including most GOP candidates for president, was "based on a lack of knowledge" about what is in the agreement.

"Some of the people who are objecting the most and just refusing even to accede to the idea of ever getting any understanding, whether they realize it or not, those people basically down in their deepest thoughts have accepted that war is inevitable," Reagan said.

He said the critics "particularly were ignorant of the advances that have been made in verification. No treaty before has ever been based on as much verification and on-site inspection and so forth as this one."

Despite the prospects of deep cuts in the superpowers' nuclear arsenals, Reagan said he still sees the Soviet Union as "an evil empire."

But he spared Gorbachev from tough criticism. He said Gorbachev "inherited" the stationing of 115,000 Sovie troops in Afghanistan and might not know that the government there was a puppet regime installed by his predecessors.

Gorbachev arrives in Washington on Monday on his first visit to the United States. He and Reagan will sign the INF treaty on Tuesday and hold meetings through Thursday on a possible 50 percent cutback in strategic weapons and other subjects.

Gorbachev, in an NBC interview earlier this week that was broadcast in the United States and the Soviet Union, also offered an optimistic assessment for a strategic arms accord next year.

"There are real prospects ahead of us ... We believe that it is possible to do a lot of work with this present administration so ... we could make headway on this major direction in the area of arms control," Gorbachev said.

Asked if he would be heartbroken if the lack of an agreement prevented him from going to Moscow, Reagan said, "I think I'd stop short of that, but I'd be very disappointed. And I just don't think it's going to happen.

"I think we're going to have a meeting in Moscow and I think there is a reasonably good chance that we will make another gigantic step forward in the elimination of nuclear weapons."

Addressing concerns that the treaty will leave NATO allies outnumbered by East bloc conventional forces, Reagan said there still will be thousands of tactical battlefield weapons that can be fired by artillery.

On Afghanistan, Reagan said he would not accept any plan to withdraw Soviet forces that was contingent upon a cutoff of U.S. aid to the Afghan resistance.

He said the remaining "puppet government" would still have military forces, leaving the resistance fighters "prey" to the army.

In a speech earlier yesterday, Reagan vowed to press Gorbachev on human rights problems, saying that political prisoners, dissidents and divided spouses will be "unseen guests" at the summit.

In a speech to 185 human rights activitists, Reagan said, "We see the violation of anyone's human rights, acts of repression or brutality, as attacks on civilization itself."