U.S., Soviets Turning to Next Arms Issue : Military: Baker, Shevardnadze to meet today on a pact to cut back on long-range nuclear weapons.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III and his Soviet counterpart, fresh from settling on a treaty to slash conventional arms in Europe, will meet in New York today to consider the next item on the superpower arms control agenda--a pact to cut long-range nuclear arms by more than one-third.

The meeting will be the fourth between Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze in a little more than a week.

U.S. officials said the Bush Administration hopes to take advantage of the current thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations to lock in deep cuts in Soviet armaments, in effect making it much more difficult for Moscow to return to the threatening policies of the past.

The two on Wednesday began discussing Soviet demands for assurances that the United States will not supply nuclear arms to Britain, Baker told a White House news conference Thursday.

In the past, the United States has refused to accept any limits on its relationship with Britain, which maintains its own nuclear deterrent.

Baker returned to Washington on Thursday to report to President Bush on the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty that he and Shevardnadze completed “in principle” Wednesday.

“Europe is still the site of the greatest concentration of armed strength in the world,” Bush said in a brief introduction to Baker’s news conference. “As Europe is transformed politically, we must also redraw the military map of the continent and lift some of the shadows and fears that we and our allies have lived with for nearly a half a century.”

Baker provided some additional details of the agreement between him and Shevardnadze.

He said the treaty sets ceilings of 20,000 tanks, 20,000 artillery tubes, 30,000 armored personnel carriers and 2,000 helicopters for each alliance--the Warsaw Pact and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Of those totals, the United States and the Soviet Union can have no more than 13,300 tanks, 13,700 artillery pieces, 20,000 armored personnel carriers and 1,500 helicopters. Baker said that alliance totals for combat aircraft have not been fixed, although the U.S. and Soviet maximums were set at 5,150 each.

Baker said that excess equipment must be destroyed, although he conceded that both the United States and the Soviet Union expect to save some of the weapons by moving them out of Europe before the pact takes effect.

He said the Warsaw Pact will have to destroy 19,000 tanks, compared to 4,000 for NATO.