U.S., Soviets Agree to Put Off Summit

President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Monday postponed “by mutual agreement” their scheduled Moscow summit meeting--the most tangible sign so far of the cooling relations between Moscow and Washington.

The meeting, slated to begin Feb. 11, instead will take place at “a later date in the first half of this year,” according to a joint U.S.-Soviet statement. Not since the 1960 downing of an American U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union has a scheduled U.S.-Soviet meeting at the highest level been aborted, although Monday’s development is not thought to signal a comparable crisis in the superpower relationship.

The war in the Persian Gulf made it “inappropriate” for Bush to be away from Washington, said the joint announcement released after Bush and Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander A. Bessmertnykh met for an hour.

An additional reason for the postponement, it said, was that work to complete the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty “will require some additional time.” START, which has been under negotiation for eight years, would cut the offensive nuclear arsenals of both sides by more than one-third. Some arms control experts worry that the summit postponement could jeopardize the arms agreement, although the Administration remains confident that details can be worked out.

“Both presidents look forward to setting an exact time (for the summit meeting) as soon as it becomes feasible to do so,” the three-sentence statement concluded.

Officials hinted that the meeting could be rescheduled for as early as March or April. Secretary of State James A. Baker III, for example, said that both sides hope to complete the final technical details on the strategic arms treaty in February, and then indicated that the treaty would not be signed until the rescheduled meeting.

Administration officials later said that the Bush-Gorbachev meeting could “conceivably” come that early, although it would depend on the Persian Gulf War.

U.S. officials said that the Soviet crackdown in the Baltic states and Soviet attempts to manipulate the recently signed conventional arms treaty also are “major factors” in the Administration’s decision to postpone the summit. Neither was mentioned in the formal statement, however.

At least 19 people have been killed and scores injured by the Soviet military and paramilitary actions in Lithuania and Latvia in the last two weeks.

Bush told Bessmertnykh that the Soviet use of force in the rebellious republics “is deeply troubling,” an Administration official said. Half of the hour-long meeting was devoted to the subject, the official added.

According to some officials, the Administration was concerned that conservative Republicans, who have been expressing increased doubts about dealing with the Soviets these days, would have criticized a Bush trip to Moscow as showing that he cared less for the human rights of the Baltic peoples than of the Kuwaitis for whom American servicemen now are fighting in the gulf.

Officials also said that the Soviets, for their part, were willing to blame the war and problems with the arms treaty for the summit delay. “If START had been finished and we then had to cancel the summit specifically because of some catastrophe in the Baltics,” one said, “that would have been more embarrassing to Moscow.”

There is concern within the arms control community that the arms agreement may be lost by the summit postponement. Spurgeon M. Keeny Jr., director of the private Arms Control Assn., recently complained that the treaty has been delayed because of efforts by each side to seek minor advantage. He cited historical examples of “lost opportunities because of the untimely intrusion of unrelated events.”

Among other cases, the downing of the U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union in 1960 killed test ban talks, he said, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan prevented ratification of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty by the Senate after it was signed in 1979.

The Administration’s optimism about ironing out details of the arms accord remains high, however.

Yet conservatives and some Pentagon officials have begun to argue that the United States should forgo a START agreement, citing Soviet manipulations of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty signed in November.

The Administration is also angry about transparent Soviet efforts to circumvent the CFE treaty. The agreement between the 21 nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact has yet to be ratified.

Seen as particularly egregious in Washington is Moscow’s attempt to reclassify three army mechanized divisions as “naval infantry” in an effort to save their equipment from the destruction required by the treaty. If allowed to stand, Soviet naval infantry will have more tanks--about 1,000--than the entire British Army, according to London’s ministry of defense.

“What really concerns us is the . . . apparent ability of the Soviet military to thwart arms agreements,” said one U.S. official. “What are the political implications of this for START? What kind of negotiating partner is Gorbachev now? These questions are giving START critics lots of ammunition.”

The Bush Administration, as well as other NATO nations, have decided to postpone submitting the conventional forces treaty for ratification until the “naval infantry” and other issues are cleared up.

U.S. officials blame the Soviet military for deliberate foot-dragging on the strategic arms treaty after the surprise resignation of Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze. In December, Baker and Shevardnadze at a Houston meeting had agreed on a package to solve remaining issues. But after Shevardnadze quit, the Soviets refused to confirm the deal.

For the last two weeks, Soviet officials have been meeting here with U.S. arms experts, but have shown no flexibility on either conventional forces or strategic arms issues, U.S. officials said.

“Maybe,” speculated one official, “Gorbachev sees no advantage in having a START agreement now and does not want to antagonize his military by pushing the issue. His foreign policy successes are not much of a lift now with all his internal problems.”

The difficulties holding up the strategic arms treaty appear to be small in comparison to the major obstacles overcome in years of negotiations. One dispute, for example, is over the Soviet insistence on inspecting the U.S. B-2 Stealth bomber to ensure that it cannot carry cruise missiles inside. The Pentagon is adamantly against allowing the Soviets to examine the super-secret plane up close.

Still other differences deal with on-site monitoring of missile production facilities, with the strength of radios that broadcast uncoded information from a missile test flight, and with new silos for the huge Soviet SS-18 missiles.

Meanwhile, the State Department Monday announced that Richard R. Burt, the chief U.S. strategic weapons negotiator, will resign in March. However, Burt will return to Geneva soon to keep working on the strategic arms treaty. A State Department spokesman said that after the treaty is ready to sign, Burt will “pursue an attractive offer in the private sector,” apparently as a consultant.