The United States and the Soviet Union blew a historic opportunity in the discussion of arms control last month in Reykjavik, NBC News Chief Diplomatic Correspondent Marvin Kalb told an audience of 400 at a forum at the Institute of Politics last night.

Kalb said he believed that officials wanted the public to think the meeting was called for the purpose of discussing arms control, when the Daniloff issue was actually the primary reason. "The conference was a way of handling the Daniloff case, which was irritating both sides enormously," he said.

Kalb's address, "U.S./Soviet Relations: The Quest for Sanity," was part of his two-day stay at the Institute of Politics as a Heffernan Visiting Fellow.

"The conference failed for the simple reason that if it wasn't strategic defense, it would have been something else," the NBC anchorman said. "The president didn't trust the Russians. And he got terribly close to an agreement but then pulled back."

Although Gorbachev and Reagan almost satisfied each others' demands for an arms control agreement, Kalb said, each agreeing to an eventual elimination of nuclear warheads on both sides, the Iceland summit was unable to reach a settlement.

Mutual lack of trust, not substantive disagreements, blocked the agreement, said Kalb. "Each proclaimed to the other, `You're not serious.' I think they're playing the greatest poker game in history."

Kalb said, "We may be able to pull [another arms control discussion] together again--if so we will all be immeasurably better off. If not, we will be immeasurably worse off."

Kalb has received numerous awards for his reporting on issues such as Star Wars and Vietnam. He appears regularly on "NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw" and is anchorman for the Sunday TV interview program, "Meet the Press."