Soviets Accept U.S. Ceiling on Europe Forces

In a dramatic and surprising concession, the Soviet Union on Tuesday accepted the U.S.-proposed ceiling for troop levels in Europe less than a week after it had indicated opposition to the numbers.

The Soviet change of heart means that a treaty on conventional forces in Europe would allow the United States to keep 30,000 more troops there than the Soviet Union would have based in Warsaw Pact countries. It also ends the principle of equality between the superpowers--at least in this one field--in arms control negotiations.

Watched by Secretary of State James A. Baker III and his Soviet counterpart, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the agreement was announced by Canadian External Affairs Minister Joe Clark, who said that Moscow now agrees to President Bush’s proposal for a ceiling of 195,000 soldiers for each superpower in the central zone of Europe, a four-nation zone focused on East and West Germany.

“In addition, the United States agrees that it will station no more than 30,000 troops on foreign territory in Europe outside the central zone,” Clark’s statement added. The Soviets specifically committed themselves not to do the same, it stated.

In announcing the agreement, Clark declared that the outcome “overcomes one of the most important obstacles to a CFE (conventional forces in Europe) treaty, and provides additional impetus to reach an agreement this year.”

The Soviets also changed the draft by adding the phrase, “including the issue of security of the neighboring states,” at the behest of Poland, it was understood.

Just four days earlier in Moscow, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev told the visiting Baker that he would accept either a 195,000-man ceiling or a 225,000-man ceiling, but for all of Europe. He objected both to the concept of differentiating between a central zone and the rest of Europe, and to the violation of the equality principle that has so long applied in U.S.-Soviet negotiations.

In Bush’s proposal, the 30,000-troop force outside the central zone would have been a unilateral declaration, but it now will be a formal part of the treaty committing the United States to that ceiling.

U.S. officials were surprised that the Soviet concession came so soon after Baker’s Moscow trip, but they expected the move eventually because Gorbachev had not formally rejected Bush’s offer, calling it a counterproposal rather than a rejection.

In a press conference Monday, Bush insisted on his position, first proposed Jan. 31, and rejected Gorbachev’s counterproposal.

Asked by a reporter why the Soviet Union had now conceded the point, Shevardnadze replied with a joking question: “Are you disappointed?”

The United States now has about 305,000 troops in Europe, of which about 275,000 are on the central front--mostly in West Germany. The Soviet Union has about 565,000 in East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia--four nations that have shed their hard-line Communist governments.

For the Soviet Union, the 30,000-troop limit effectively ensures that the United States will not raise its peripheral forces to try to outflank the Soviet Union, but that seemed a small gain in exchange for giving up the principle of equal ceilings. The extra U.S. forces would largely consist of Air Force personnel in Italy and Britain and smaller units in Turkey and Greece.

Soviet agreement to Bush’s terms on troop levels indicates that the White House calculation that the Soviet Union wants arms agreements far more than the United States at this time and will compromise more than ever before has paid off, U.S. officials said.

U.S. officials said Soviet acceptance of the U.S. position is important because it makes the point that there is to be no one-to-one relationship between U.S. and Soviet soldiers in Europe. Thus if Soviet troops are withdrawn below the 195,000-man ceiling--and there is widespread expectation that because of political changes in the East Bloc, virtually all Soviet forces will be out of East Europe within a year or two--the United States will not necessarily make commensurate cuts.

The U.S. argument for this rested on two points:

* U.S. forces are in Western Europe by invitation and the NATO allies want them to stay, at least at some significant number for the foreseeable future. Soviet troops, by contrast, were imposed on East Europe, and already Czechoslovakia and Hungary have asked them to leave. Moscow also has expressed willingness to discuss a troop withdrawal from Poland if requested.

* U.S. forces, once reduced in number, would be far more difficult to reintroduce into Europe from the continental United States than Soviet troops would be from the Soviet Union, just beyond the Polish border.

“However much the Soviets withdraw, they still will have very large, modern, capable armies in Soviet Europe,” said one U.S. official. “There are major differences between the widths of the Atlantic Ocean and the Bug River,” he said. The Bug separates Poland from the Soviet Union.

Studies at the RAND Corp. in Santa Monica, which significantly influenced Administration attitudes on troop cuts in Europe, found that the Soviets had a four- to six-hour time advantage in rushing troops to Eastern Europe over a U.S. return to Western Europe.

The U.S. official argued that “the President’s proposal--195,000 men in the central zone and another 30,000 elsewhere in Europe--is right at the minimum necessary to sustain our strategy and maintain stability.”

“It takes into consideration the projected restructuring of forces in East Europe,” he added, referring to the anticipated pullout of Soviet troops from East Bloc countries. “We intend to have that number of American troops in Western Europe for the foreseeable future, out to the mid-1990s.

“Those 225,000 and 195,000 manpower numbers were picked after very careful study,” the official added. “They consist of one Army corps, several air wings, and logistical troops to facilitate a quick return of forces in a crisis. That’s why the White House called the proposal a ‘floor’ even though it would legally be a ‘ceiling,’ ” he added.

At the continuing CFE talks in Vienna, the 23 nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact are considering reductions in five categories of ground and air weapons, as well as the manpower cuts. The two sides have largely solved the issues involving the ground weapons, including tanks, artillery and armored personnel carriers. But disagreements remain on the issues of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, officials said.

The basic purpose of the treaty was to reduce and destroy weapons that seize and hold territory, and to create a system to verify the reductions.