Soviets Back Troop Cuts but Criticize Bush Plan

President Bush’s proposal for accelerated superpower troop cuts in Central Europe is “a step in the right direction” and the Soviet Union is ready to talk more about it, Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov said Thursday.

However, he added, “it is not a good sign” that the Bush Administration appears to have ruled out for now even deeper manpower cuts on the Continent. The comments represented the Kremlin’s initial response to the proposal floated Wednesday in Bush’s State of the Union address.

The Soviet spokesman also objected to flashes of what he termed “Cold War rhetoric” in that address and complained that Washington’s troop-cut arithmetic left a false impression about the size of the proposed reductions in U.S. forces.

The mixed Kremlin reaction came as Soviet negotiators opened talks in Budapest on Hungary’s demand that Moscow unilaterally withdraw all of its estimated 50,000 troops from that country by as early as the end of this year.

Last month, the same deputy foreign minister heading the talks in Hungary, Ivan P. Aboymov, was in Prague for talks on a similar initiative by Czechoslovakia’s new coalition government that involves about 70,000 Soviet soldiers. The Czechoslovaks want the first stage of the pullout to be completed by May 15, and negotiations are expected to resume in Prague next week.

Soviet troop withdrawal has become an important political issue in both Hungary and Czechoslovakia as they prepare, on March 25 and June 8 respectively, for their first free national elections in more than 40 years.

Although Warsaw is not known to have made any such formal approach, most Poles also want Soviet troops out of that country. And some analysts believe that despite what Moscow may see as shortcomings in Bush’s latest proposal, it may yet make it easier for the Kremlin to satisfy its newly independent-minded East European allies.

An article earlier this week in Red Star, the Soviet army newspaper, objected to the “hastiness” with which the Czechoslovak and Hungarian governments were pursuing the withdrawal issue and warned that ill-considered decisions “could lead to a military imbalance in Europe.”

Bush urged during his State of the Union message Wednesday that Washington and Moscow limit the number of troops each stations in Central and Eastern Europe to 195,000. That involves deeper cuts on both sides than have previously been discussed, but it would require far larger reductions by the Soviets, who have about 570,000 troops in East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

The United States would be required to remove about 60,000 troops now stationed in West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg to reach the 195,000 limit. But it would keep 30,000 troops stationed in Greece, Britain, Turkey and Italy, down from about 50,000 based in those countries now.

As a result, Gerasimov noted, the United States would retain a total of 225,000 troops in Europe--not 195,000. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, deploys no troops on the Continent outside its own territory, except those in Central Europe, so “this is something that needs clarification,” the Soviet spokesman said.

Briefing reporters in Washington on the Bush initiative on Wednesday, a senior Administration official said that Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev had promised during a telephone conversation with the President to “study” the proposal.

Officials also stressed in those briefings and in contacts with Washington’s NATO allies that the proposed cuts would be the last envisioned by the United States in Europe for the foreseeable future.

Gerasimov said Bush’s message appears to be “that he needs American troops in Europe from here to eternity,” adding that “it is not a good sign.” Moscow, the Soviet official said, contends that “it must be a ceiling, this figure, not a floor. We must continue to have this (objective): There must be no foreign troops on foreign soil.”

That same element of the Bush plan, meanwhile, added to the general enthusiasm with which America’s West European allies greeted the initiative.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, for example, said in London that she attaches “great importance” to Bush’s telephoned assurance last weekend that his latest troop deployment proposal “will be a floor and that no more reductions are envisaged. This will ensure a continued strong American presence in Europe.”

“It is in the interest of West German and West European security that the President should see the newly proposed strength of American forces in Europe as a long-term commitment,” West German Defense Minister Gerhard Stoltenberg declared.

“In the current circumstances, we see 195,000 American troops as a minimum level for the maintenance of current NATO strategy,” echoed a statement by the Dutch Foreign Ministry.

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl commended Bush for “giving the right signal at the right time,” and French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas said it marks “a new and important step” on the road to disarmament.

Gerasimov said Moscow is waiting to see a more detailed version of the Bush proposal put on the table at Conventional Forces in Europe talks in Vienna. Both superpowers have said they hope to have a treaty ready for signing later this year, although a number of differences remain over mutual reductions in both manpower and non-nuclear weapons on the Continent.

The Soviet spokesman told reporters here that political events in Europe have accelerated well ahead of “the slow pace at which diplomatic negotiations proceed.” And he welcomed Bush’s State of the Union message as “a good sign things are changing.”

However, he objected to Bush’s characterization of developments in Eastern Europe last year as “a triumph of U.S. ideals and the collapse of communism.” Such talk, Gerasimov said, recalls the “spirit of the Cold War” and is “a relic of the past.”