Bush Said to Alter NATO Nuclear Stance : Diplomacy: But don’t expect a ‘bombshell’ at the two-day summit, he says.

President Bush met here with his top national security advisers Monday as he completed preparations for this week’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting, saying that he expects the meeting to produce “interesting developments” but no “bombshell.”

“I don’t want to understate where we’re going or overstate it,” Bush said as reporters waited to see Secretary of State James A. Baker III and other top advisers arrive at Bush’s vacation home. “Some will look at it as this major change in direction, and others won’t.”

Bush has sent allied leaders a letter outlining U.S. proposals for the two-day summit in London, which begins Thursday. Prominent on the list, officials say, is a proposal for a new NATO declaration that nuclear weapons would be used in Europe only as a last resort.

The declaration would be only a minor change in the substance of NATO policy--the alliance has long said that nuclear weapons would be used only if absolutely necessary--but it would be a major change in the rhetoric on the subject.

The proposals have two major targets: public opinion in Germany and the Soviet Union. The Administration’s hope is that the changed language would reassure the Soviets that NATO is not a danger to them, while quieting sentiment in Germany for an immediate and wholesale withdrawal of all NATO nuclear weapons from that nation’s soil.

Above all, Bush and his aides hope that their new wording will head off a suggestion some Europeans have made that NATO go further and pledge “no first use” of nuclear arms. American military planners say that there is a crucial distinction between the phrases “no first use” and “use only as a last resort.”

Even though there is almost no prospect any longer of a Soviet invasion of Europe, NATO still must be prepared for that possibility, Administration officials say. And because the Soviet army remains by far the largest of any military force in Europe, they say, those preparations have to include the option of using nuclear weapons first if necessary to stop an attack.

A NATO pledge of “no first use” would “make Europe safe for conventional war (for the Soviets),” Baker told reporters last week.

After three hours of meetings and then lunch with his national security aides, Bush continued his usual vacation pace of hectic relaxation, heading for the golf course for a match with Vice President Dan Quayle.

Quayle, his wife Marilyn and Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady were expected to be Bush’s guests overnight at his Walker’s Point home. Today, Quayle and Brady will join Bush’s trade and economic advisers for discussions of the meeting on Bush’s agenda after the NATO conference--the three-day economic summit of leaders of industrial nations in Houston beginning Monday.

The NATO session is designed to update NATO’s structure to conform to the drastic changes that have reshaped Europe since Bush and the other allied leaders met last spring in Brussels. Since then, the Communist Warsaw Pact has collapsed, Germany has all but unified and the plans and purposes that have animated NATO for decades have become obsolete.

But because NATO is the only European institution in which the United States plays a leading role, the Administration has aimed its efforts at finding new ways to keep the alliance relevant.

Bush and his advisers hope that the summit will result in agreement on new political roles for NATO while setting guidelines for negotiations on further withdrawals of troops and nuclear weapons from the Continent.

A first round of troop-cut negotiations is under way in Vienna, and negotiators are hopeful that a treaty can be signed in mid-November.

Bush has said that negotiations on reducing nuclear weapons in Europe could begin as soon as the current talks are over. At the same time, a second round of troop-cut talks would begin, aimed in large part at setting limits on the German army.

CHANGING IDENTITY: As NATO changes, so will the relationship between the United States and Europe. H3

NEXT STEP

Secretary of State James A. Baker III leaves today for a conference of foreign ministers in Brussels on the issue of aid for the new democracies in Poland and Hungary. He will then go to the NATO conference Thursday and Friday in London. President Bush will meet with advisers today to prepare for an economic summit of industrialized nations in Houston next week. He flies to London on Wednesday.