Baker, Shevardnadze Give Arms Talks a Push : Superpowers: U.S. officials say the two restored momentum but failed to resolve some key disputes.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, meeting for the third time in just over a month, restored some momentum to superpower arms control talks Friday, although they failed to resolve remaining disputes over cruise missiles and other topics, U.S. officials said.

A senior U.S. official used the terms “serious” and “constructive” to describe the nuclear arms control segment of the three-hour meeting. Last month, when the two men met in Washington, officials described the arms talks as “disappointing.”

At the same time, U.S. officials expressed growing confidence that Moscow eventually will drop its opposition to North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership for a reunited Germany.

One senior official who attended Friday’s talks said Shevardnadze acknowledged that NATO is shifting from a military alliance aimed primarily at the Soviet Union to an organization with peacetime political objectives that would seem much less threatening to Moscow. That would undercut most of the Soviet objections.

“He wasn’t prepared to acknowledge anything specifically, but he was prepared to speak in generalities in a way that suggested there was some evolution in his thinking,” the official said. “There was no movement on specifics, in part because I think the Soviets are still wrestling with the problem” and are seriously considering changes in their official position.

On another subject, the official said Baker suggested a joint U.S.-Soviet humanitarian effort to combat starvation in Ethiopia. Baker said that Soviet aircraft could carry U.S.-donated food to Ethiopia, a Marxist state with close ties to Moscow. The official said Shevardnadze expressed interest in the plan but did not immediately accept it.

Baker will visit Moscow later this month for more talks with Shevardnadze to prepare for the May 30-June 3 summit meeting in Washington between President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Baker and Shevardnadze were in Bonn for today’s opening session of the “two-plus-four” German reunification talks involving the two Germanys and the four World War II victors--the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France.

Both U.S. and Soviet officials continued to express optimism that troublesome arms control issues can be resolved in time for Bush and Gorbachev to approve at the summit the outlines of a treaty to sharply reduce long-range nuclear weapons.

In a statement to NATO foreign ministers Thursday, the text of which was made public by the State Department on Friday, Baker expressed hope that he and Shevardnadze would “at least narrow the remaining differences” over air-launched and sea-launched cruise missiles. That was the most contentious arms control issue at their previous meeting.

However, the senior U.S. official said nothing was settled Friday, although the atmosphere was much better.

In a brief comment to reporters as he and Baker left the meeting, Shevardnadze said that although no arms control decisions were made, “our discussion of that was very interesting and constructive.”

On the issue of NATO membership for a unified Germany, U.S. officials were encouraged by an article published Friday in an East Berlin newspaper by Maj. Gen. Geli Batenin, a military adviser to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. The general wrote that such membership would help ensure continued stability in Europe.

“The most preferable option is the incorporation of a unified Germany in the political organization of NATO,” Batenin wrote in the Berliner Zeitung.

His comments contradicted Shevardnadze, who told reporters before his meeting with Baker that “for such a giant (Germany) to belong to one bloc, one alliance . . . will not create conditions of stability.”

But the West German newspaper Die Zeit quoted Sergei P. Tarasenko, a close Shevardnadze aide and chief of policy planning for the Soviet Foreign Ministry, as hinting that Moscow is looking for little more than a diplomatic fig leaf to cover its ultimate acceptance of German membership in NATO.

“There is a psychological obstacle that prohibits Moscow from accepting (NATO status for Germany) without additional new elements of at least cosmetic or decorative character,” Tarasenko was quoted as saying.

A West German government spokesman said Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who met Shevardnadze for about 90 minutes before the Soviet official met with Baker, hinted at one possible inducement.

The spokesman said Kohl and Shevardnadze discussed “German-Soviet relations, especially economic cooperation, in the context of German unity and the developing situation in Europe.” The hard-pressed Soviet economy could benefit substantially from increased cooperation with the booming German economy.