Fewer Warsaw Pact Weapons to Be Destroyed

Huge caches of Warsaw Pact weapons in Europe, once slated for destruction under a conventional arms treaty to be signed next week, will be only half as big as originally promised, U.S. officials confirmed Saturday.

Many of the weapons, including nearly 17,000 Soviet tanks, have been moved off the Continent into Soviet Asia and will not be counted Nov. 19, when the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty is scheduled to be signed by representatives of 22 nations in Paris.

As a result, only about half the 100,000 Warsaw Pact weapons once expected to be destroyed under the CFE treaty will be carved up by acetylene torches or otherwise deactivated, according to figures recently provided to U.S. officials by Soviet negotiators.

Many of the Soviet tanks and other heavy arms have been moved across the Ural Mountains to huge storage depots in Siberia. Some officials worry that they could one day be reactivated and moved to threaten Europe again.

Those concerns, as well as the broader question of whether storage in lieu of destruction circumvents the spirit of the CFE agreement, are expected to be raised by congressional conservatives in treaty ratification hearings, officials said.

Bush Administration officials, however, said they are not alarmed by the Soviet actions, noting that many of the weapons shipped to Siberia have been left outside to rust. They said it would take two years or more to restore the machinery to peak operating condition.

“The basic point of the treaty remains intact,” one senior U.S. official said. “Both NATO and Warsaw Pact forces go down to equal ceilings in Europe. That was what was intended when treaty negotiations began, and that’s what will happen. All of the weapons to be eliminated from Europe will be eliminated, and the Soviets go down 10 times more than we do.

“The lesser issue here is what happens to weapons removed from the Continent before treaty provisions take effect,” he added.

Under the CFE treaty, the Warsaw Pact and NATO alliances will be subject to identical ceilings on five categories of weapons: 20,000 tanks, 20,000 artillery pieces, 30,000 armored combat vehicles, 6,800 aircraft and 2,000 helicopters, for a total of 78,800 on each side.

When the treaty negotiations began two years ago, the proposed cuts would have required Warsaw Pact forces to reduce their conventional weapons in Europe by about 60% and NATO forces to cut their conventional arms by about 10%.

Over the last two years, however, the Soviets have moved tens of thousands of weapons into Asia, where they are not covered by treaty provisions requiring destruction--or in limited cases conversion to peaceful use--of all weapons in excess of the ceilings.

The United States and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have reduced their conventional weapons arsenals in Europe as well, although by lesser amounts than the Soviets.

Because of the withdrawals, Warsaw Pact forces will be required to reduce their arms by about 40% from current levels, while NATO will be required to cut only 3%, according to calculations by the private Arms Control Assn. based on official figures.

The United States is asking Moscow to provide a “full accounting” of the disposition and condition of all transferred weapons, even though they fall outside the jurisdiction of the treaty, officials said.

In an effort to make several thousand more Soviet weapons eligible for destruction, Washington also has proposed moving back the base line from which reductions occur to September, instead of using current weapons counts.

The Soviets have indicated a willingness to make a partial accounting of the stored weapons, one official said, and they seem prepared to go even further to meet U.S. desires. But the outcome probably will remain uncertain until next week’s summit in Paris.

NATO had considered proposing a freeze on weapon levels when the CFE talks began to preclude transfers out of the Continent, sources said, but the idea was discarded for at least two key reasons. One was that the proposal would have frozen Soviet forces in Eastern Europe just as pressure was building there to kick them out. Another was a desire on the part of NATO members to sell or give some of their own older weapons to allies outside Europe.

Since 1988, the United States has transferred 700 tanks to Egypt, sold 220 tanks to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states, and shipped 450 tanks to U.S. forces currently deployed in the gulf region, all from its European arsenals.

Some NATO countries also have transferred equipment out of Europe. But since weapons once belonging to East Germany, a Warsaw Pact member, are now counted as part of the united Germany’s arsenal, overall NATO totals remain only slightly lower than in 1988.

The Soviets, for their part, announced a unilateral reduction of half a million troops in 1988. That, in turn, required the withdrawal of 10,000 tanks from Europe, among other equipment, before the CFE talks began. As many as half of the tanks have been destroyed or converted to other uses such as bulldozers, the Soviets have said.

When the CFE negotiations began, the Soviets had 41,580 tanks in Europe. The total has fallen to about 24,900, which means that about 16,680 tanks will escape the treaty’s destruction requirements. An estimated 15,000 armored vehicles and 20,000 artillery pieces previously stationed in Europe also will be spared.

After the treaty is signed, the Soviets must reduce their European arsenal to 13,150 tanks--their share of the total Warsaw Pact allotment--or slightly more than half of their present strength. That means about 11,750 Soviet tanks must be destroyed. Artillery and armored vehicles face similar reductions.

Bush Administration officials express confidence that the stored equipment will not pose much of a threat.

Satellite reconnaissance shows that the Soviet tanks in Siberia are being left outside exposed to the elements, rather than being mothballed inside buildings under conditions that would allow rapid reactivation, officials said.

The Pentagon has decided that on-site inspection of the storage depots is not necessary to detect possible reactivation, according to Jenonne Walker, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who until recently was a State Department official closely associated with the CFE talks.