Speedup in Arms Cuts Proposed by Bush at Summit : Superpowers: President’s 16-point package includes ban on chemical weapons. His goal: agreement by 1990.

President Bush, meeting with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev at a summit disrupted by violent weather, proposed Saturday that the two superpowers speed up their efforts to cut back conventional and strategic nuclear weapons and to ban the production of chemical weapons.

The arms proposals, part of a 16-point package covering a wide range of economic, environmental and other issues, were aimed at seeking concrete agreements in all three areas by the end of 1990.

The President, declaring that he wanted to put some “steam” in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) process, urged that a treaty be concluded--if possible--by the time of a Bush-Gorbachev summit in Washington, which he suggested be held the final two weeks in June.

To speed up negotiations on a chemical weapons treaty, Bush indicated his willingness to end all U.S. production of new chemical weapons as soon as a multinational ban on such weapons is completed--provided Moscow accepts such an agreement.

“This is the first time the United States has ever proposed such a ban on chemical weapons,” a senior Bush aide said. “It is a major policy departure.”

Other analysts cautioned, however, that the issue of chemical weapons is so complex and that a total multinational ban so difficult to enforce that any such agreement may be years away at best.

Although Bush opened the two-day summit with proposals for action on some of the most important issues dividing the two superpowers, opportunities for significant progress on any of them here were substantially diminished by the violent storm that rolled across the Mediterranean on Saturday.

The storm, kicking up waves of more than 16 feet and packing winds of more than 50 miles per hour, caused the two leaders to cut their time together almost in half. They canceled a second bilateral meeting of almost two hours that was to have been held Saturday afternoon, as well as a two-hour dinner meeting scheduled for Saturday night.

Moreover, so turbulent did the waters of Marsaxlokk Bay become that they were forced to hold their five-hour session during the morning aboard a Soviet cruise ship moored in more sheltered waters, rather than on the missile cruisers Belknap and Slava, which were struggling to hold their positions 1,000 yards off shore.

The President’s top aides had worried that, by offering such concrete proposals, he might be opening the way for the kind of detailed negotiating session he wanted to avoid. But they concluded that the risk was necessary to seize the initiative on U.S.-Soviet relations at a time when some critics have accused Bush of being too timid.

“The President was informal in delivering his proposals and said he did not expect a detailed response,” according to a U.S. official. “He was not trying to nail him (Gorbachev) down on specific issues. He was proposing some major changes in U.S. policy because of the extraordinary changes in Soviet policy in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe.”

Bush, laying out his proposals at the beginning of the morning session, called for carrying forward the negotiations on conventional forces reduction “with sufficient speed” to permit a special summit meeting in Vienna next year at which all 23 nations of the Warsaw Pact and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization could gather to sign a treaty.

The Bush package, which a White House official said drew a “quite positive” response from Gorbachev, also included proposals for speeding up negotiations for a U.S.-Soviet trade agreement and for other measures designed to assist the Soviet Union economically and to help it enter the international free market economy.

In addition, Bush said the United States would host an international conference next fall to begin work on a framework treaty to control global warming and invited the Soviets to join that meeting, as well as an earlier “experts-level” conference on the economic impact of the problem to be held at the White House next spring.

With first the uprising in the Philippines and then the stormy weather here distracting Bush and threatening to overshadow the summit, White House officials scurried around Saturday night briefing reporters and emphasizing that the President had moved forcefully to lay his proposals before Gorbachev.

Soviet officials, who had planned a joint on-the-record briefing with the United States for Saturday night until it was scrubbed because of weather conditions, said they had no immediate comment on the Bush proposals

Bush, in a prepared statement released by the White House, called Saturday’s session “extremely productive.” Despite the disruption, with Bush virtually marooned on the missile cruiser Belknap and apparently unable to travel to the Soviet liner for the scheduled dinner meeting, the White House announced that it expected today’s schedule to be maintained as originally planned even though it means forgoing about four additional hours of Bush-Gorbachev sessions.

The schedule calls for a final one-hour session on the Belknap and joint press statements by the two leaders, after which Bush plans to hold a press conference and then fly to Brussels.

There, he is scheduled to brief Western allies on the results of the summit. The White House noted that the weather forecast called for winds to decrease to 15-20 m.p.h. today, which would enable Gorbachev to travel to the Belknap by launch.

Marlin Fitzwater, Bush’s press secretary, issued a statement saying that Bush and Gorbachev, each accompanied by seven top advisers, had “a very productive, informal and substantive meeting” of about two hours’ duration to begin the summit. But with Fitzwater also stranded on the Belknap, an on-the-record press briefing on that session and on a later one-on-one session between the two leaders of about three hours was delayed until today.

Bush opened the summit by talking for about an hour, speaking both extemporaneously and from notes as he laid out his proposals. He reportedly told Gorbachev: “You already know that I want perestroika to succeed. Now I want to show that I mean that with a series of specific ideas.”

Gorbachev, said a U.S. official who participated in the session, replied: “We greatly appreciate these proposals. We had come here prepared to ask for specifics, so we are glad to get them without asking for them.”

Bush apparently voiced major criticism of Soviet policy in only one area--Central America. The official who participated in the session said Bush told Gorbachev that Soviet policy in Central America is out of step with new thinking within the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe and that its policy toward Nicaragua and Cuba is the most problematical factor in U.S.-Soviet relations.

Bush reportedly told the Soviet leader that while he would like to proceed with all of the proposals he outlined, he would not be as free to do so as long as Soviet policy in Central America remains unchanged. The official declined to discuss Gorbachev’s response but said that “there wasn’t a meeting of the minds on that issue.”

He also declined to comment on any criticism by Gorbachev of U.S. policy, except to say that criticism of the U.S. role in helping put down the military revolt in the Philippines “was not a major factor in the discussion.”

Bush’s other proposals included:

* Targeting the 1990 summit for completion of a final agreement for granting the Soviet Union most-favored-nation status, which would help qualify it for U.S. government credits and credit guarantees.

* Supporting observer status for the Soviet Union at the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) talks, which Washington has previously opposed, once the Uruguay round of talks are completed next year.

* Expediting U.S.-Soviet technical cooperation, including specific cooperative projects such as finance, agriculture, statistics, small business development, budgetary and tax policy.

* Beginning discussions on a bilateral investment treaty.

* Completing work on the two nuclear testing treaties--the Threshold Test Ban Treaty and the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty--so they can be signed at the 1990 summit.

* Jointly supporting Berlin as the site of the 2004 Olympics games.

* Persuading the Soviets to make public details of their military budget, force posture and weapons production figures, as the U.S. does now.

* Significantly increasing the university student exchange program so that an additional 1,000 U.S. and 1,000 Soviet college students would be studying in each other’s country by the beginning of the 1991-92 school year.

Earlier Saturday, the seas were so heavy at times and the wind so ferocious that it appeared uncertain whether the summit would get under way on time.

The 8,575-ton Belknap, where Bush spent the night, and the 12,500-ton Slava were both anchored at the bow and stern, about 400 yards apart, in Marsaxlokk Bay.

At times both ships dragged their stern anchors, but the White House issued a statement saying the relative positions of the ships remained the same and that the high winds and heavy seas represented “no danger to anyone aboard the Belknap.”

However, because the winds made it extremely difficult for Bush to disembark from a launch, officials decided to shift the opening sessions to the 25,000-ton, 644-foot Maxim Gorky, a Soviet luxury liner built in 1969 by the West Germans. It was docked about 1,000 yards away in much calmer waters, making it possible for Bush to get there and disembark from his launch after a rather rocky ride.

The two leaders managed to begin their first session on time--about 10 a.m. Malta time--after scrapping a 15-minute arrival ceremony that Gorbachev had planned for Bush.

Gorbachev, jovial and chatting with aides, arrived in the lobby of the Maxim Gorky about five minutes before Bush was due and told reporters who tried to question him, “I’m relaxing right now.”

But after Bush arrived, looking weary after an 8-hour, 35-minute flight, a busy schedule Friday and a night on a rocky ship, the Soviet leader seemed to delight in joshing with reporters.

Bush, playing it straight, told inquiring reporters, “We will be discussing a wide array of subjects.”

At which point Gorbachev, asked if he planned to propose reductions in Warsaw Pact forces, replied: “The first thing to do is to eliminate those types of ships which you cannot board in this kind of weather.

“We will have a secret agenda in this way,” he added with a laugh, “to disarm the 6th Fleet.”

Bush, standing beside Gorbachev as reporters wrote down his every word, chose to ignore the comment about the U.S. naval force that patrols the Mediterranean and instead chimed in with a weather report: “Calming down. It’s a good sign.”

With that, Bush declared, “Let’s go to work,” and both leaders and their entourages turned and walked toward the meeting room--the card room on the ship’s promenade deck. Shelves of books lined one wall of the room, and on another wall hung a portrait of Gorbachev smoking a pipe.

As the parties entered the room, the mood was jovial. Bush shook hands all around and said, “Feeling pretty good. Fine, just fine. Good night’s sleep.”

Gorbachev joked about the weather and how it had forced them to change the meeting site, then cracked a joke about the narrow table at which the two teams sat facing each other for the meeting.

“It’s so narrow that if we don’t have enough arguments, we will kick each other,” he declared. Bush managed a faint smile.

Questioned by reporters who were present before the official discussions began, Gorbachev said, “ Da , da “ (yes, yes), when asked if the summit would result in agreements.

Asked what kind of agreements, he said, “ Mnogovo ,” (many), but his comments were off the cuff and may not have been intended as a substantive statement about what the summit will produce.

Bush opened the expanded bilateral meeting, which lasted until noon, by speaking for more than an hour, according to the White House, and laid out more than a dozen suggestions for economic and political progress in U.S.-Soviet relations.

Gorbachev spoke at length about his goals for economic and political reform in the Soviet Union and the discussion also ranged from the economic situation in Europe to arms control and unrest in Central America.