Any Way Out Of the Circle?

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Foreign policy worries mount

As a presidential campaign draws near, every U.S. Administration makes an extra effort to produce some evidence of progress in dealing with its main foreign policy difficulties. But for the Reagan Administration, the rest of the world is proving decidedly uncooperative. The Administration, indeed, seems trapped in a period of what might be called circular frustration: policymakers go round and round on the same old problems.

On the central issue, relations with the Soviet Union, there has been what one top diplomat called "a whiff or two of movement" from Moscow of late. But the movement seems isolated in such secondary areas as a human rights agreement at the marathon conference in Madrid (see WORLD). In the far more important arena of nuclear-arms talks, new details of a Soviet proposal seemed to emphasize rather than ease a continuing deadlock. In the Middle East, U.S. diplomacy has stalled severely. Late last week the White House had not even received official confirmation that Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin would keep a long-scheduled date to visit Washington next week. In Central American policy the Administration, snubbed in an effort to open negotiations with the leftist guerrillas in El Salvador, is concentrating instead on negotiating with its Democratic opposition in the House, so far with uncertain prospects. The troublesome details:

U.S.-SOVIET RELATIONS. In the Geneva Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), the Soviets filled in some numbers on the limits they would accept on particular categories of nuclear weapons in order to carry out a 20% cut in overall numbers of missiles and bombers that they had proposed earlier. Key figure: the U.S.S.R. would reduce its force of intercontinental land-based, multiple-warhead missiles to 700, from the 820 it is permitted under the unratified SALT II treaty.

On close examination, however, the Soviet proposal amounts to little flexibility. The U.S. has been pressing for deep cuts in heavy land-based missiles. But the Soviet proposal would allow Moscow to keep all of its SS-18 and SS-19 monsters, the two heaviest classes of missiles that Washington fears most. Worse, the Soviets are still threatening to walk out of START unless the U.S. cancels the deployment of Pershing II and cruise intermediate-range missiles in Western Europe that is to begin in December, and to take military "countermeasures." British experts believe that this could mean the stationing of Soviet cruise missiles in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

Stymied at Geneva, the U.S. has been seeking other talks with the Soviets. Secretary of State George Shultz, in a recent memo to the President, argued that expanded contacts could now be pursued, since Reagan's military buildup had put him in a position to negotiate from strength, and that failure to seek better relations with Moscow would only enhance Reagan's reputation as a dangerous hardliner. Visiting with the President in Washington last week, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher reiterated the enthusiasm of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who met with Soviet President Yuri Andropov in Moscow two weeks ago, for a U.S.-U.S.S.R. summit.

Shultz has intensified private talks with Soviet Ambassador to Washington Anatoli Dobrynin that were resumed about six months ago. The implicit, ultimate purpose: to explore an agenda for a possible summit conference. So far, the Shultz-Dobrynin chats have produced little. Nonetheless, so-called confidence-building measures are thought to be worth trying. Shultz has proposed four. The Soviets have agreed to an upgrading of the Washington-Moscow hot line, but have rejected or given a lukewarm response to the other three measures: establishment of secure communications links between U.S. and Soviet military forces, a kind of diplomatic beeper system to give each country's ambassadors quick access to top government officials in a crisis, and cooperation against nuclear terrorism.

MIDDLE EAST. The Administration, red-faced and emptyhanded, is awaiting a visit by Lebanese President Amin Gemayel this week. Gemayel has complained bitterly that a scheduled reshuffling of Israeli forces in southern Lebanon appears to be a preparation for a long occupation. The U.S. can offer nothing but sympathy. Having persuaded Israel to pull its troops out of Lebanon if Syria would do the same, and then having failed to budge Syria an inch, Washington has little leverage on Jerusalem to stop the redeployment. Gemayel is expected to ask at least that American Marines from the international peace-keeping force around Beirut be restationed to face Syrian troops in the Chouf mountains. The Administration will reply that Congress would be loath to permit that. The U.S. hopes French troops from the peace-keeping detachment will take on the job.

CENTRAL AMERICA. Special Envoy Richard Stone will soon return to the area, still ready, insist State Department officials, to meet leaders of the El Salvador guerrillas. But since a meeting has proved elusive, attention is turning to negotiations on Capitol Hill. Seeking to head off a congressional move to halt covert U.S. aid to the contra forces aiming to overthrow the Marxist government of Nicaragua, the Administration is offering a compromise: aid to the contras would cease if Nicaragua stops supplying arms to, and maintaining command centers for, the insurrection in El Salvador.

Picking up a congressional idea, the White House this week may create a bipartisan commission to examine all aspects of Central American policy. Explains one Administration strategist, in an explosion of metaphor mixing: "The Democrats don't want to be painted into the scapegoat's corner if it [Central America] goes down the drain. And the White House doesn't want to be the lonely hawk. So there may be a merging of interests in the commission idea." Perhaps, but at best the Administration is fighting a holding action, in Central America and in Congress.

--By George J. Church.

Reported by Laurence I. Barrett and Johanna McGeary/Washington

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett, Johanna McGeary This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.