Warsaw Pact Parcels Out Weapons : East Bloc: Six nations agree on sharing a reduced inventory of tanks and artillery, clearing the way for a treaty on conventional arms.

Gearing up to go out of business, the six Warsaw Pact nations Saturday signed an agreement on how to share a pared-down inventory of tanks and artillery, the last major obstacle to a European conventional arms treaty that will be signed in Paris later this month.

The agreement fixes distribution of 20,000 tanks and an equal number of artillery pieces among the member nations. It was signed in a ceremony at a Hungarian government guest house.

The Soviet-led defense alliance has been plunged into an identity crisis by the sweep of Western-style democracy through Eastern Europe. Kremlin officials have indicated they may be willing to see the alliance disbanded as early as next summer, a senior Hungarian official disclosed.

Soviet officials have been struggling to hold together the military bloc created in 1955 to counter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

But the East European partners have all sworn off joint maneuvers and have pledged much of the government money that would have been spent on defense to restructuring their failing economies along free-market lines. One former Warsaw Pact member, East Germany, has already been absorbed by NATO following German reunification.

“We’ve had indications that the Soviets might be willing to see the pact disbanded by the middle of next year,” said the Hungarian official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

At the weekend meeting in Budapest, foreign ministers of the six remaining Warsaw Pact nations at first bogged down over details of how to parcel out the hardware that will be retained but removed from active duty, delaying signature of the distribution accord.

Negotiators for Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union agreed after extended talks that about one-third of the 3,500 tanks to be mothballed should be stored outside the Soviet Union. That concession seemed to appease the East European partners, according to sources involved in the negotiations.

Details of how the alliance’s assets will be shared were worked out at a meeting in Prague, Czechoslovakia, last weekend.

Western officials at the Vienna-based conventional arms talks said the Warsaw Pact plan was the last serious hurdle to the agreement to be signed Nov. 19 in the French capital.

Under terms of the treaty, NATO and the Warsaw Pact will be limited to the same levels of tanks, armored vehicles, aircraft and artillery. But deeper cuts will be required in the East Bloc’s more substantial arsenal to meet the ceilings.

While the Warsaw Pact continues to function as a negotiating team at European disarmament talks, it is already essentially defunct as a military alliance.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Geza Jeszenszky even avoided referring to the Warsaw Treaty Organization, as it is officially known, instead calling it the “group of six states.”

Hungary announced months ago that it will no longer take part in joint military exercises, and other member states echoed that position at a news conference after the distribution accord was signed.

“If you have a crisis in a multilateral treaty organization like the Warsaw Pact and you are trying to find a quiet solution to bring about its end, I don’t think maneuvers would be a good idea,” said Polish Foreign Affairs Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski.

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze sent his deputy, former arms negotiator Yuli Kvitsinsky, to the session, skipping it himself, presumably because of continuing unrest in the Soviet republic of Moldova.

Kvitsinsky declined to describe the Warsaw Pact as defunct, saying the alliance “lives and fulfills a useful function.”

But the Hungarians have put Moscow on notice that they will withdraw unilaterally if the Warsaw Pact does not bring about its own dissolution by the end of next year.

The weekend meeting was to have been a summit drawing Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and leaders of the five other pact states. But Gorbachev asked that the session--widely expected to be the alliance’s swan song--be postponed until after the Paris meeting of the 34-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Jeszenszky told reporters that the summit is expected in December.

East European states reorienting their trade and political ties toward the West are now counting on the CSCE to oversee creation of a more peaceful and stable Europe, thereby reducing their need to invest in armaments.

SCRAPPING WEAPONS

Here are the figures for distribution of the Warsaw Pact’s 20,000 tanks and 20,000 artillery pieces, according to an agreement, signed in Budapest on Saturday.

Country Tanks Artillery Soviet Union 13,150 13,175 Bulgaria 1,475 1,750 Czechoslovakia 1,435 1,150 Poland 1,730 1,610 Romania 1,375 1,475 Hungary 835 840 Totals 20,000 20,000