Arms Negotiators Hustle to Tie Up Loose Ends : Non-nuclear pact: Paris has a celebration set for Nov. 19 European summit. Trouble is, the U.S. is accusing the Soviets of foot-dragging.

The question on the table recently was how to destroy a 40-ton Soviet tank. Or more precisely, how to destroy 30,000 Soviet tanks that are to be eliminated in Eastern Europe under terms of an historic arms reduction agreement being negotiated here at the Hofburg Palace.

Some of the delegates to the 23-nation conventional arms reduction talks in Vienna favored explosives, blowing the T-62 battle tanks to smithereens. Others were partial to cutting the tanks into pieces. The Soviets themselves, inspired by an old photograph of Lenin riding on a tractor made from World War I tank parts, wanted to convert some of the tanks into farm equipment--swords into plowshares.

But the “tank destruction idea of the month,” as a senior Western negotiator put it, was a suggestion from the Polish envoy that a giant, eight-ton iron ball be dropped repeatedly on the tanks until they cracked apart.

According to delegates here, the final result of the tank destruction talks will probably be a menu of equally destructive alternatives, leaving it up to individual countries how to dispose of their tanks.

This is the kind of issue that faces negotiators from the 23 countries, including the United States, as they tie up the loose ends on a historic 400-page Conventional Forces in Europe treaty aimed at drastically slashing U.S. and Soviet forces in Europe. The talks deal with the real hardware of war--tanks, airplanes, armored troop carriers and helicopters--the weapons that have defined the balance of European power for a half a century.

The U.S. envoy to the talks, R. James Woolsey, calls the potential agreement “the armistice for the Cold War.” In May, President Bush termed it “the most ambitious conventional arms control agreement ever concluded.” Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev have pledged to finalize the treaty by the end of the year.

If all goes well, the CFE treaty will be signed at the 34-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe summit scheduled to be held in Paris on Nov. 19. The French government has heralded the summit of all European countries (minus Albania), the United States and Canada as nothing less than the “dawning of a new Europe” and has planned its usual round of gala festivities and banquets at the Elysee Palace for the event.

However, as the treaty negotiations enter the critical final phase, Bush Administration officials have accused the Soviets of “dragging their heels” on some key issues.

On Friday, Woolsey told a seminar in Brussels organized by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that although the negotiations are at the “end game” phase, he could not say whether they will be finished in time.

An agreement would have to be reached by mid-October at the latest in order to present it for signing at the summit, he said; the lead time is necessary to draw up a treaty and translate it into six languages.

Part of the problem is that the Soviet side of the talks is controlled by the Soviet military command, a much more conservative element than the reform-minded civilians of the Gorbachev government.

Western negotiators claim that in one important category called the “sufficiency rule,” which determines what percentage of tanks and other weapons can be held by any one country, the Soviet Union has actually increased its demands in the last few weeks.

Western negotiators charge that the Soviet negotiators are taking advantage of the impending summit deadline to jam through unacceptable proposals.

“Their main card at this point is the pressure of the summit,” said a Western official. “That’s why they are so insistent.”

The situation has caused a rift in the Western Bloc, with the United States and other countries blaming France for caring more about its gala celebration of a new Europe than the important details of the talks.

The Bush Administration has warned that it will not attend the summit without a finalized CFE treaty.

“No ticket, no laundry,” quipped one senior Western negotiator.

The French, as might be expected, are outraged at the prospect of delaying the summit, which would be meaningless without the Americans or British or Soviets, or any other nations unlikely to attend if there is no completed treaty.

“It is too late to talk about changing the summit,” fumed French Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Hadelin de la Tour du Pin. “The budget has already been set and the financial commitments made. The work on the building for the meeting has started and the recruitment of personnel already started.”

In fact, the most difficult elements of the treaty have already been resolved, more by the events in the streets of Eastern Europe last fall than by the negotiators. When the CFE talks began in January, 1989, it was on the Cold War format of NATO countries, led by the United States, on one side and the Warsaw Pact, led by the Soviet Union, on the other.

The revolution in Eastern Europe changed all that. The Warsaw Pact fell apart. Former Communist Bloc countries began siding with NATO countries in pushing to get Soviet troops out of their territory.

“The actual withdrawal of Soviet forces was accomplished by people like Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia and the people of Poland and Hungary who went to the streets,” said a Western diplomat. “What began as an East-West division has become 22 countries on one side and the Soviet Union on the other.”

Likewise, the impending unification of Germany has eliminated the difficult question of U.S.-Soviet troop levels in the two Germanys. In talks in the Caucasus Mountains last July, Gorbachev and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl agreed that all Soviet troops would be withdrawn from what is currently East German territory in four years.

Thus a landmark U.S.-Soviet agreement allowing 225,000 U.S. troops and 195,000 Soviet troops in Western Europe was, in Secretary of State James A. Baker’s words, “overtaken by events.”

What remains are smaller but tricky issues such as terms of treaty verification procedures, including such seemingly minuscule details as who will pay the hotel bills of Soviet inspectors when they visit expensive Western European cities; questions about the concentration and distribution of forces in Europe, an issue that is increasingly important as U.S. officials are looking for possible troop concentrations on the southern edge of NATO, closer to the volatile Middle East; and tricky issues involving aircraft and naval forces.

The main sticking point for the Soviets is the U.S. refusal to discuss carrier-based aircraft as components of its forces in Europe. The main problem area for the Americans is the Soviet refusal to negotiate land-based naval aircraft.

The Americans claim that the Soviets have already taken air force planes from Eastern Europe, repainted them in navy colors and assigned them to bases near the Baltic Sea.

“You can’t have a loophole that just requires paintbrushes to skirt the terms of a treaty,” said a Western negotiator. At any rate, the United States, mainly because it wants to avoid a confrontation on the question of its own naval forces, says it is willing to sign a treaty without settling the aircraft and helicopter issues.

“It would be a better treaty with the aircraft in it,” said a negotiator, “but it is an acceptable treaty without it.”

Asked Friday if Washington would agree to dropping aircraft if it were proposed by the Soviet Union, Woolsey said, “We would listen.”

Despite the U.S. insistence that it is not bound by the deadline of the Paris summit, teams of diplomats and military officers have been working day and night to complete the treaty.

The end-game negotiations are so intense that senior Defense Department officials James Hinds and William Ingle barely glanced at their food as they dined with the No. 2 Soviet negotiator, Gen. Victor Tatarnikov and his interpreter at the intimate, 10-table Zum Kuckuck restaurant in the center of Vienna earlier this week.

As courses of clear soup with dumplings, French goose liver pastry, veal steak with kidneys, and strawberry dumplings arrived at their table, the Americans were overheard hammering away at the Soviet general on “land-based naval aircraft” and other key issues.

Meanwhile, the Japanese, who are not party to the conventional arms discussions, sense that an agreement is in the air. During the past few weeks, the office of the American delegation to the arms talks has been besieged with calls from Japanese officials and journalists about the destined-to-be-destroyed tanks, which they would like to buy for use as scrap metal--swords into Toyotas.

“I’ve had more calls from Japanese journalists about the tanks than from American journalists about the talks,” said Elizabeth Pryor, press officer to the American delegation.

Times staff writer William Tuohy, in Brussels, contributed to this report.