End of Cold War Toasted : Nonaggression Pact, Arms Treaty Signed

Leaders of 34 nations today toasted the end of Cold War rivalries in a celebration sullied by advancing tensions in the Middle East. President Bush said the treaties and testimonials of Europe cannot endure “if the rule of law is shamelessly disregarded elsewhere.”

In the ornate French presidential residence, the Elysee Palace, leaders of 16 NATO members and the remaining six Warsaw Pact nations put their signatures on two treaties--one making sweeping cuts in non-nuclear arms throughout Europe and the other pledging nonaggression toward one another.

Then, the 22 representatives of the two military alliances joined leaders of neutral and unaligned countries to begin an unprecedented 34-nation summit on the future of Europe.

“What a long way the world has come,” Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev declared, noting that it has been five years since his first summit with then-President Ronald Reagan.

“Our meeting today marks the end of an epoch and thereby a beginning,” said French President Francois Mitterrand, the conference host. “It is the first time in history that we witness a change in depth of our landscape which is not the outcome of a war or bloody revolution.”

Both Bush and Gorbachev combined exhilaration on the easing of East-West tensions with renewed appeals for an end to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The exiled emir of Kuwait sent a message to the summit nations, pleading for help to dislodge the aggressors.

Gorbachev cautioned that, if the gulf crisis cannot be resolved, “much of what we have accomplished in the past few years would be in jeopardy.”

And Bush told other world leaders that the principles of peace and self-determination being enshrined in Paris “are grossly violated in the Persian Gulf.”

The centerpiece of the summit, the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe treaty, calls for the destruction or removal of thousands of tanks, artillery pieces, combat vehicles and attack aircraft from the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains deep inside the Soviet Union.

By so doing, it will alter the military balance in Europe by erasing Moscow’s ability to mass huge numbers of tanks and other heavy armor in central Europe.

The other treaty is a nonaggression pact in which the members of the two alliances declare they are “no longer adversaries” and will “refrain from the threat or use of force” against each other.

Bush called the CFE treaty “the farthest-reaching arms agreement in history, and it signals the new world order that is emerging.”

Yet he cautioned, “Our success here can be neither profound nor enduring if the rule of law is shamelessly disregarded elsewhere.”

Gorbachev, who was instrumental in relaxing the Soviet Bloc’s longtime grip on its Eastern European satellites, was the final leader to affix his signature to the treaties.

French authorities imposed tight security around the unprecedented summit of government leaders. Sharpshooters were placed on rooftops, anti-terrorist units were mobilized and 10,000 police officers fanned out throughout the city.

The European summit is formally known as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.