U.S. Calls Gorbachev ‘Drugstore Cowboy’ : Move Reflects Washington Disarray Over Kremlin’s Initiatives

WASHINGTON —  A White House spokesman accused Mikhail S. Gorbachev of acting like a “drugstore cowboy” Tuesday in an unusually personal swipe that reflected Administration disarray over the Soviet leader’s international initiatives.

The remark by presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater came in response to a question about Gorbachev’s latest diplomatic surprise, a promise to stop supplying weapons to leftist-ruled Nicaragua.

Throughout the day, Administration officials seemed unable to agree how the United States should respond to Gorbachev’s action. State Department officials praised the Soviet decision, which they described as a step toward peace in Central America.

But Fitzwater said the White House remains “leery of (Gorbachev’s) intentions” and emphasized that there was “no evidence” that Soviet arms shipments to Nicaragua had stopped.

The Administration’s mixed signals reflect a growing frustration over Gorbachev’s ability to dominate the international agenda, as well as a running internal debate over the Soviet leader’s basic intentions: Does Gorbachev genuinely want to cooperate with the United States in Central America and elsewhere in the world?

The Soviet president has adroitly played on tensions between the United States and its allies over battlefield nuclear weapons in Europe, overshadowed Secretary of State James A. Baker III during his recent trip to Moscow and complicated U.S. policy toward Asia by ending his nation’s long-running feud with China.

International Image Gap

The result has been an international image gap that the Administration has been unable to shake: Gorbachev the dynamic peacemaker facing a President Bush unwilling to take equally bold actions.

Even U.S. clients like the rebels in Nicaragua have been taken with Moscow’s moves: “The Soviet Union is moving with the grace of a ballet dancer, and the United States is lumbering like a mastodon,” rebel spokesman Bosco Matamoros complained.

That image, Fitzwater insisted, is unfair. “The United States has been very careful and methodical in its examination of our relationship with the Soviet Union,” he said in response to a question about the Soviet moves in both Europe and Central America. By contrast, Gorbachev has been “throwing out, in a kind of a drugstore cowboy fashion, one arms control proposal after another--all of which upon examination proved to be either very little changed from existing positions, involving promises that have been made in the past (or) reductions that are not meaningful.”

That characterization of Gorbachev drew a cry of anguish from another senior Administration official. “Why are we criticizing him?” he said. “We ought to be trying to encourage him.”

Gorbachev’s concession on Nicaragua, in fact, appeared to be at least partly a response to the Bush Administration’s pressure on the issue--but the Administration’s confused reaction almost obscured that point.

Gorbachev Letter for Bush

Administration officials confirmed that Gorbachev sent a letter to Bush in the first week of May saying that the Soviet Union had stopped sending weapons to Nicaragua at the beginning of 1988. But the letter was “rather nebulous,” one official said, so Baker pressed Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze for a firmer commitment during his visit to Moscow last week.

The response was that the Kremlin had decided to stop sending Nicaragua weapons but will continue to supply the Sandinista regime with other military equipment, such as trucks and boots, as well as economic aid, officials said.

Fitzwater and other officials said that U.S. intelligence has observed frequent Soviet Bloc deliveries of military equipment to Nicaraguan ports this year. But they disagreed on how much hardware the Soviet Union has landed and whether the intelligence suggests that Gorbachev has been keeping his promise to cut off the delivery of weapons.

“At this point we don’t see the evidence of any cutoff,” Fitzwater said. “Military aid is still coming in. . . . And we are very leery of their intentions.”

But other officials said that it appears possible that Soviet weapons deliveries indeed did stop at some point in the year. The confusion, they said, stemmed from the fact that some early deliveries believed to include weapons may have been in the Soviet “pipeline” before the decision to stop the arms flow was made and later cargoes included crates whose contents were uncertain.

As to the volume of shipments, Pentagon spokesman Dan Howard said that $80 million worth of Soviet Bloc military hardware had reached Nicaragua in 17 shipments during the first three months of this year. But officials elsewhere in the Administration--who spoke on condition that their agency not be identified--said that as much as $348 million had been carried aboard 28 ships during the first four months of the year.

Officials said that they could not explain the discrepancy between the two figures. They did agree, however, that last year the Soviets transported $515 million worth of equipment in 68 separate shipments.

In military terms, a Soviet cutoff probably would have little effect on the Sandinistas, a senior State Department official said. “They have stockpiled all the weapons they need, and ammunition is easy to buy on the market,” he said. “The Soviets come out of this one smelling like a rose.”

But in political terms, the Gorbachev move could signal a new willingness by the Kremlin to cooperate with the U.S. effort to negotiate a settlement in Nicaragua, one official said. “As a great power, the Soviets aren’t going to walk away from Nicaragua,” he said. “But we’re trying to help them adjust their policy in a way that’s helpful to us, that they can undertake gracefully, and that they can perceive as being in their interest.”

It is precisely that point, however, that divides the Administration, with some officials more skeptical than others about Gorbachev’s intentions.

“There is a spectrum of views on that question,” one official said.

Gorbachev’s move on Nicaragua was the latest in a series of initiatives that have upstaged the Administration most of the spring.

Soviet calls for negotiations to abolish short-range nuclear missiles in Europe, for example, have aggravated a U.S. dispute with West Germany over the weapons. That quarrel now threatens to dominate the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit at the end of the month, which was supposed to be Bush’s first opportunity to play the role of leader of a united Western alliance.

Until recently, Bush and his aides have insisted that being overshadowed by the Soviet leader did not bother them. Bush repeatedly defended his decision to review U.S. foreign policy carefully before taking any bold steps and insisted that he would not be pushed into hasty decisions.

Officials also offered rhetorical support for Gorbachev and his policies of reform, quickly repudiating Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, for example, when Cheney suggested that Gorbachev is probably doomed to fail.

But Fitzwater’s unusual attack on Gorbachev suggests that the Administration’s self-confidence is wavering. Bush’s foreign policy reviews are now complete, and he is most of the way through a series of speeches designed to unveil his new policies. But the criticism of his approach has not changed.

Gorbachev continues to attract worldwide attention with his statements. Bush’s speeches, by contrast, have been widely ignored.

Fitzwater conceded Tuesday, for example, that the United States has received virtually no response from allies or the Soviets to the President’s speech Friday.

Times staff writer Melissa Healy contributed to this story.

‘A DRUGSTORE WHAT ?’ Here’s a headache for Russian translators: The White House on Tuesday compared Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev to a “drugstore cowboy.” Definitions of that term vary. Here are a few: 1. A braggart.

2. A western movie extra who loafs in front of drugstores between pictures.

3. A man or youth who idles around public places showing off and trying to impress the opposite sex.

4. A tyro cowboy, especially one of those who carry a revolver dangling from a loose belt to somewhere near the knee.

Sources: Dictionary of American Slang, Second Supplemented Edition (Wentworth & Flexner).

A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, Eighth Edition (Partridge).