Soviets Shift A-Arms From Tense Regions

The Soviet Union is moving some nuclear warheads from the Baltic states and other regions where nationalist tensions have flared to the more stable Russian republic, Bush Administration officials and private experts said Friday.

“It’s the prudent thing to do,” said an Administration official, noting that upheaval in the Baltics and the southern republics in recent months has stirred concern in Moscow that a nuclear weapons storage site could be overrun by rebels.

The official discussed the matter on condition he not be identified.

Two Administration officials said the Soviets were moving short-range nuclear weapons--those capable of reaching neighboring countries but not the United States--out of storage depots in the Baltics and some southern republics.

Private experts on the Soviet military said the United States should view the development as reassuring because it indicates that Kremlin authorities are taking precautions in the face of political instability in the Baltics, which are pressing Moscow for independence, and in other republics torn by ethnic strife.

Georgi V. Shchekochikhin, a Soviet Embassy spokesman, said he had no information on the subject.

U.S. officials declined to say how many of the Soviets’ estimated 33,000 nuclear warheads are being moved.

Private experts said the transfer of weapons does not affect the deployment of long-range nuclear arms capable of striking the United States. Thus, the shift has little, if any, effect on the military balance, although it does mean some Soviet weapons are farther from possible targets in Western Europe.