Bush Takes Step to Assist Soviets : Diplomacy: The renewal of a trade-restriction waiver is a vote of confidence and removes a summit obstacle. It also clears the way for most-favored-nation status.

By DAVID LAUTER

June 4, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON — President Bush on Monday took the first in a planned series of steps to extend aid to the Soviet Union’s economic reform program as Administration officials tried to clear away obstacles to a possible summit meeting in Moscow later this month.

Bush’s first step was symbolically large but limited in practical impact--waiving for another year the restrictions of the so-called Jackson-Vanik Amendment that bars the Soviets from participating in U.S. export subsidy programs.

Congress adopted the amendment in 1974 to prod the Soviets into easing their emigration laws, particularly for Soviet Jews. The law was a highly contentious issue between the countries until Bush first granted the Soviets a waiver in December.

Renewing the waiver amounts to a vote of confidence in current Soviet policies, under which the “numbers of Soviets emigrating rose from 2,000 in 1986 to over 370,000 in 1990,” according to the White House. The chief practical impact will be to allow the Soviets continued access to credits for buying U.S. grain.

But the waiver also is one of the prerequisites for giving the Soviets most-favored-nation trade status, a more significant step that White House officials expect Bush to recommend to Congress later this month. Nations with this status are granted favorable tariffs and quotas.

At the same time, Administration negotiators began work on what could be the final round of talks leading to a nuclear weapons reduction agreement between the two superpowers. But even as they started, White House and State Department officials offered conflicting assessments of how much work remains before a treaty can be signed.

“The remaining issues are technical,” State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said. By contrast, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said: “There are significant issues remaining--there’s no doubt about that.”

The difference in emphasis reflects, in part, what one senior official called “significant interagency disagreements” within the Administration. Defense Department officials complain that pressure to resolve the arms talks in time for a summit could cause U.S. negotiators to make too many compromises with the Soviets.

As U.S. officials differed over how to assess the remaining issues, a Soviet spokesman took a middle ground. The differences are “highly technical, not at all political, but very complex,” Vitaly I. Churkin, spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry, said in Moscow.

Planning for a summit meeting has become an effort in puzzle-solving, involving two separate but related agendas.

One agenda is economics. Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev would like to get Western aid for his economy, preferably something with a large dollar figure attached that would give a psychological and financial boost to his compatriots.

Bush, for his part, would like to find ways to help Gorbachev that do not cost taxpayers much--expanded trading rights are one example, and possible loan guarantees for grain sales to the Soviets would be another.

Meanwhile, Bush is using the Soviets’ economic need as leverage for progress on the other agenda--arms control. Over the weekend, Secretary of State James A. Baker III and his Soviet counterpart, Foreign Minister Alexander A. Bessmertnykh, met in Lisbon and cleared away nagging problems from last year’s agreement on conventional weapons.

They also agreed to give their deputies instructions to resolve the remaining issues on a nuclear arms treaty, which involve rules for inspection and verification of what each side has promised to destroy.

The two “agreed to give a green light to the negotiators, giving them additional instructions and sending high-level representatives to guide the talks,” Churkin said. “The signing of this treaty will be the goal of the summit.”

Administration officials used to try to conceal the link between the two agendas, but they no longer bother to try. Arms control and economics are “all tied up” together, Fitzwater said.

“We are pressing for progress on the arms side. Obviously, they need Western support. I think it would be probably disingenuous to suggest that there isn’t some connection there,” he said. The Administration “wants to make sure that we get some return for what help we give.”

In doing that, Bush has an extraordinarily free hand at home. Waiving Jackson-Vanik, for example, was once a controversial issue, particularly among Jewish groups that pushed for the amendment to force Soviet officials to allow Jews to leave the country.

But with more than 300,000 Jews having left the Soviet Union over the last two years, including 66,194 who have gone to Israel so far this year, groups such as the National Conference on Soviet Jewry praised Bush’s decision.

About the only opposition Monday came from a small group of professional, conservative political fund-raisers who announced the formation of an organization for which they will be paid to solicit donations--the Taxpayers Alliance Against the Bailout of Communism. The group will oppose trade concessions to both the Soviet Union and China, organizers said.

While dates for a summit will depend on progress on both agendas, White House officials have begun to narrow their options. On Monday, the White House announced that Bush will meet with South Korean President Roh Tae Woo in Washington on July 2, effectively foreclosing a Moscow summit in the first week of July.

Officials now suggest that the most likely time will be the last week of June. And while they acknowledge that time is short, the officials point out that the last U.S.-Soviet summit--September’s meeting in Helsinki, Finland--was arranged in eight days.

Times staff writer Michael Parks in Moscow contributed to this story.

BACKGROUND

The 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment, sponsored by the late Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash.) and former Rep. Charles A. Vanik (D-Ohio), links granting of most-favored-nation status for Moscow with its emigration policies, especially those regarding Soviet Jews. For years, it kept U.S.-Soviet trade in limbo and was a constant irritant in relations between the superpowers. But with a rising tide of Jews streaming from the country, the amendment has been rendered all but moot.