U.S. Hails New E. Bloc Arms Monitoring Plan : Verification: NATO inspectors would get unprecedented access to Warsaw Pact air bases.

Bush Administration officials responded warmly Friday to a new Warsaw Pact proposal for monitoring cuts in conventional arms, saying that it appears to “parallel” the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s position and could help produce a formal agreement in six months to a year.

“The East proposals on verification appear to be based on the concepts that NATO presented . . ., “ said State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler, adding: “We are pleased.”

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney also described the plan as a positive step.

“I think it is encouraging in that it shows a willingness on their part to very seriously engage in this question of conventional arms reductions in Europe,” Cheney said in a wire service interview.

The Soviet plan was presented Thursday in Vienna, where talks will resume Nov. 9 on reaching military parity between NATO and the Warsaw Pact on conventional forces.

The East Bloc’s proposal would provide Western inspection teams with unprecedented access to Warsaw Pact air bases, according to Administration officials. The Warsaw Pact could not refuse an inspection team’s request to enter specific bases. Once there, inspectors would have free access to the base, “to the point of climbing into the cockpits,” one observer noted.

In addition, the Soviets proposed that aircraft subject to limits would be rolled out of their hangars upon request. In addition, all aircraft would be electronically “marked” with identification codes to facilitate each side’s counting of opposing aircraft.

“The Soviets are clearly interested today in getting results in Vienna by next summer,” a senior West German official said in response to the latest concessions.

In May, President Bush sought to accelerate the conventional arms talks by calling for NATO negotiators to come forth with detailed proposals by this fall and a completed agreement by next summer. Since then, the alliances have briskly traded proposals designed to limit aircraft.

In a recent concession, the Warsaw Pact broadened its definition of Warsaw Pact aircraft that should be covered by the negotiations and proposed a lower limit on warplanes--4,700 aircraft--than NATO had advanced.

But not all elements of Moscow’s package were greeted with satisfaction. The proposal would prohibit countries on either side from establishing new air bases or expanding existing ones within another country. Officials fear that the provision would bar the United States from shifting its aircraft in the face of changing war plans or demands by its allies.

The United States, for instance, is seeking a new NATO home for its 401st fighter wing, which Spain ejected from Torrejon Air Base last year.

The Soviets offered the concessions in hopes that NATO would drop its opposition to counting rules that could leave the Warsaw Pact with an advantage in aircraft, officials believe. The Warsaw Pact, pointing to the threat posed by U.S. carrier-based aircraft as well as by long-range bombers, has insisted that the negotiated limits exempt its air defense interceptors as well as jet trainers.

By contrast, NATO has insisted that all aircraft capable of shooting and based between the Atlantic and the Ural Mountains should be subject to the negotiated limits.