Soviet Offer May Speed Conventional Arms Pact

The latest Soviet proposal on force cuts in Europe, which the State Department welcomed as a “very positive development,” significantly advances prospects for a new agreement on conventional arms reduction in the foreseeable future, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

Important differences remain, but the Moscow offer made in talks in Vienna coincides largely with a North Atlantic Treaty Organization opening proposal for limits on tanks and other equipment.

More importantly, it accepts the NATO concept of limiting a single country’s contribution to an alliance to 60% to 70% of the alliance’s total war materiel, as well as limiting how much of a single country’s materiel can be stationed outside home borders. The effect would be to curb Moscow’s capacity to intimidate its East European allies.

The new Soviet moves, according to U.S. officials, also should improve prospects for two other key sets of superpower arms negotiations.

“We view this as a serious and substantive proposal that is being received as such,” said State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler. “We treat and accept this seriously, and it’s a very positive development.”

White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater echoed the enthusiastic evaluation. “Those are major, major concessions (by the Soviets) that put them more in line with the NATO proposal,” he said. “It’s an offer that’s on the table. It’s not a speech.”

U.S. officials said that the conventional arms proposal made Tuesday could speed agreement on the prickly issue of the future of short-range nuclear missiles in Europe. That is now the subject of a major dispute between the United States and West Germany that threatens to mar next week’s NATO summit meeting in Brussels.

Affects Other Arms Talks

East-West talks on reducing the missiles, which West Germany wants, could begin sooner if the negotiations on conventional forces progress quickly, since the United States views the missiles as an important counterforce against the East Bloc’s superiority in troops and non-nuclear weapons.

Also, the strategic arms reduction talks on cutting intercontinental nuclear arsenals in half could benefit, because some experts believed that the forum for those talks was getting too far ahead of the conventional force talks.

Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, for example, had complained that reductions in nuclear arms could give Moscow new opportunities to exploit its overwhelming conventional superiority. An increased pace in the conventional talks would ease this concern.

Although billed in some reports as a surprise, the ceilings proposed Tuesday by the Soviets on men and equipment had been disclosed to Secretary of State James A. Baker III during his trip to Moscow two weeks ago by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Tutwiler called the formal Soviet proposal laid on the table in Vienna an “elaboration” and a “fleshing out” of Gorbachev’s comments.

A State Department expert said that with the offer “the Soviets have basically accepted NATO positions already offered at Vienna. There will still be fights over whether to include manpower and aircraft in the first phase of reductions (over the next six or seven years), which we don’t want to do but the Soviets do, and some other issues.

“But it’s as if the Soviets decided numbers don’t matter that much, that it’s more important to reduce their overall defense burden, keep up the momentum toward agreement, improve their image, rather than squabble over 1,000 tanks or so,” he added.

The expert said that an accord on conventional forces, as well as strategic arms, may now be possible in “as early as a year for either or both.” That could occur, he said, “if we get decisions at the highest political levels on which matters can be compromised,” he said.

The Soviet-initiated Warsaw Pact proposal does not meet directly with each point of the NATO proposal. On the other hand, it calls for cuts in some categories--manpower and aircraft--that NATO ignored. The NATO proposal, in contrast, calls for indirect manpower cuts--through withdrawal of the manpower needed to operate tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery as that equipment is reduced.

On tanks, NATO proposed 20,000 total for each alliance within Europe, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains. No single country could have more than 12,000 tanks. Of these, no country could have more than 3,200 tanks outside its own borders, that is, on the territory of an ally.

The Soviet proposal accepts the 20,000 total, but called for 14,000 tanks as the single nation maximum and 4,500 tanks as the out-of-country maximum.

The discrepancies may arise partly because the Soviets count small armored scout cars as tanks while NATO does not. Once that difference is eliminated, the gap between should be reduced.

Similarly, NATO would limit artillery pieces to 16,500 total, 10,000 for one country, with 1,700 maximum abroad. The Warsaw Pact proposed 24,000 total pieces, 17,000 for one country and 4,000 abroad. Here again, the two sides count differently, with the Soviet Bloc including 75-millimeter artillery and large mortars while NATO tallies only artillery of 105 millimeters and larger.

NATO would limit armored personnel carriers to 33,500 total, 16,800 for a single nation, and 6,000 out of country. The comparable Warsaw Pact proposal was 28,000, 18,000 and 7,500, respectively.

The size of the proposed manpower is not clear. The Washington Post reported that the Warsaw Pact would cut 1.26 million troops from its forces. Baker was told by Gorbachev that the offer was for equal ceilings of 1.35 million men for each alliance, a senior official said. Reuters news service reported that the Warsaw Pact had proposed a ceiling of 920,000 on any single nation within either alliance.

NATO does not want to discuss cuts in fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. But the Warsaw Pact, contending that NATO has an advantage in both quantity and quality of these weapons, proposed a ceiling of 1,200 attack aircraft and 1,350 helicopters for national forces, and 350 and 600, respectively, stationed on foreign territory.