Progress Made on Nuclear Arms Treaty : Diplomacy: Baker and Shevardnadze hope to complete a pact this year cutting weapons stockpiles by over one-third.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze reported “good progress” Friday toward completing a treaty this year slashing the superpowers’ arsenals of long-range nuclear arms by more than one-third.

In a seven-hour meeting wrapped around the dedication of a bronze sculpture incorporating dismantled U.S. and Soviet intermediate-range missiles, Baker and Shevardnadze also cleared up the remaining technical issues of a treaty reducing conventional weaponry in Europe, which the two men settled in principle on Wednesday.

“We are a little tired, but the results are good,” Shevardnadze said.

The meeting was the fourth that Baker and Shevardnadze have held in a little more than a week while the Soviet foreign minister has been in New York to attend the opening of the U.N. General Assembly.

Baker predicted that U.S. and Soviet arms control negotiators in Geneva will be able to complete work on the strategic arms limitation treaty in time for President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev to sign it at a summit meeting in Moscow before the end of this year. If that expectation is realized, it would be the third Bush-Gorbachev meeting this year following sessions in Washington and Helsinki, Finland.

The most difficult remaining issue, Baker said, is a provision intended to prevent the United States and the Soviet Union from trying to circumvent the purpose of the arms reduction pact by transferring strategic technology to allies not covered by the treaty. In practice, the issue affects only U.S. cooperation with Britain on advanced nuclear technology. The Soviet Union no longer has any allies that it would trust with such advanced weaponry.

In the past, the United States has refused to accept any limitations on its military relationship with London.

“Non-circumvention has not been fully completed, but we made some good progress on that,” Baker said. “If we are able to do that, a number of other issues that are outstanding should fall into place.”

He said there are remaining disputes concerning Soviet plans to modernize their giant SS-18 rockets and over the Soviet Backfire bomber. But he said those matters can be settled quickly once the non-circumvention issue is settled.

During a highly symbolic break in their talks, Baker and Shevardnadze participated in the dedication in the garden of the U.N. building of a 39-foot-high bronze statue depicting a mounted St. George thrusting a lance into the heart of a dragon. The statue incorporates the twisted rubble of a Soviet SS-20 and an American Pershing 2 nuclear missile that were destroyed as part of a 1987 treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear weapons.

Cast by Zurab Tsereteli, the Soviet Union’s official artist laureate, the statue bears the title “Good Defeats Evil.”

“The nuclear dragon is the ultimate evil,” Shevardnadze said. He said the sculpture incorporates missiles that were “beheaded and destroyed, not by the artist’s fantasy but by the will of the governments and peoples that brought them into being.”

In his comments, Baker noted that the United States and the Soviet Union have leapfrogged the arms control agenda of longtime antagonists and now share a common goal of forcing Iraq to end its occupation of Kuwait.

“In burying the Cold War deep in the sands of Arabia, we have moved into a new era of world politics,” Baker said. He called on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to “rejoin the civilized world and destroy his chemical and biological weapons and research and development facilities for all weapons of mass destruction.”

Tsereteli, who has held the artist laureate title since Stalin’s time, tied a large yellow ribbon on the dragon’s neck to call for the release of foreigners held captive in Iraq and Kuwait. However, in his brief speech, he neglected to specify the symbolism, saying only that he had dreamed of a green-and-yellow statue and that he was now adding the yellow to the already greenish bronze.

In addition to arms control, Baker and Shevardnadze said they talked about regional conflicts, particularly the confrontation in the Persian Gulf.

“It is still the joint position of the United States and the Soviet Union that there should be an unconditional withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait and a restoration of the legitimate government of Kuwait,” Baker said. “There is no difference between us with respect to our position on matters regarding the gulf.”