Summit Within Sight as Cloud Over U.S.-Soviet Relations Begins to Lift : Superpowers: End of Gulf War, easing of Moscow’s Baltic crackdown boost ties.

Only a few weeks after Mikhail S. Gorbachev irritated the White House with a futile effort to save Iraq from conclusive defeat in the Persian Gulf War, U.S.-Soviet relations are on the upswing again and prospects for a superpower summit meeting by the end of June are improving.

As Secretary of State James A. Baker III heads to Moscow on Thursday for several days of talks, a once-formidable array of obstacles to a revived summit have narrowed to several key arms control issues, senior U.S. officials said.

To be sure, severe problems could recur if the Soviet government uses repressive tactics in connection with Sunday’s referendum on whether the 15 individual republics of the Soviet Union want to remain unified, the U.S. officials said.

But the recent easing of Moscow’s crackdown in the Baltic republics has helped to lift the cloud over the U.S.-Soviet relationship. And the resounding allied victory in the Gulf--along with the soaring public approval ratings for President Bush--has put Washington in a magnanimous mood.

“You could say the Gulf War has left the President lots of room to maneuver,” one official said.

In fact, U.S. and Soviet officials may now be in the best position in some months to bear down on the remaining arms control issues to see whether a compromise can be reached in time to allow the scheduling of a spring summit.

Not long after the Gulf fighting ended, Soviet officials were proposing that the summit, originally set for February in Moscow, should be rescheduled for mid-May. Washington immediately dismissed the idea as premature.

But U.S. officials acknowledged that the war’s successful conclusion has largely offset any lingering ill will over Gorbachev’s last-ditch attempts at peacemaking on behalf of Iraq, which would have allowed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to leave Kuwait with significant forces.

Bush’s polite but firm rejection of Gorbachev’s peace overtures has disarmed U.S. conservatives, who suspect the President of being too sympathetic to the Soviets and who would have criticized him if he had visited Moscow in February after the violence in the Baltics.

Outrage over the Soviet government’s use of brutal force in Lithuania and Latvia in January has diminished after the withdrawal of paramilitary “black beret” troops from the region, U.S. officials said.

Still, the Administration remains concerned about Gorbachev’s “move to the right,” as his recent alignment with the Red Army and KGB secret police has been described. And it does not dismiss the potential for bloodshed in the increasingly tense confrontation between the democratic followers of Boris N. Yeltsin, president of the Russian Federation, and conservative hard-liners.

Barring a new round of Soviet repression, however, the major obstacle to getting U.S.-Soviet relations back on track involves a key dispute over interpretation of an East-West treaty signed in November to limit conventional forces in Europe, officials said.

The Administration is reluctant to reschedule the summit as long as Moscow continues to interpret the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, or CFE, in a way that would exempt three Soviet army divisions by calling them “coastal defense” and “naval infantry.”

If the Soviets get away with their ploy, roughly 3,500 tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery--about 5% of total Soviet weaponry left in Europe--would not be counted against the ceilings for those weapons under the treaty.

The Soviets insist that the units were transferred from the Red Army to the Soviet navy before the treaty was signed in November and therefore are not subject to the agreement. They base this view on treaty language stating that “naval forces . . . will not be addressed.”

But the United States and the other signatory nations, including all members of the former Warsaw Pact, disagree. All weapons exempted from the treaty are specifically described in the text, they note, and coastal defense and naval infantry units are not mentioned. In addition, the weapons of marines and other naval infantry units of North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations are counted against the treaty limits.

Moscow’s gambit has generated anger in Washington because, as Baker has said, “it cuts to the heart of credibility and trust.” If the Soviets prevail, there would be nothing to preclude significant reinterpretations of other signed treaties.

The Administration has refused to submit the conventional forces treaty for Senate ratification until the matter is cleared up. Its position is supported by five key members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, led by Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), who called the Soviet interpretation “unacceptable.”

Administration analysts are undecided about Moscow’s motives. Some believe that the Red Army--which always has opposed the treaty because it cuts Soviet weapons in Europe six times more than all NATO nations combined--want to scuttle the pact by pressing a blatant effort to circumvent its provisions. Others argue that the Soviets are just “chiseling” at the edges.

After months of dispute, “there is some basis for hope now” that the issue can be resolved, a U.S. official said Tuesday.

“We’ve picked up signals that the Soviet political leadership recognizes that they need to make a major decision to solve the problem--and that they need to resolve the problem if we are to move forward with the entire arms control and security agenda,” the official said.

He said a way may be found for the Soviets to “save face” so that they will not be forced to admit that they tried to cheat, as they did two years ago in acknowledging that a huge radar station built near Krasnoyarsk in Siberia violated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972.

Besides the conventional forces dispute, Administration officials said there are some continuing difficulties with minor issues involved in pending negotiations on a strategic arms reduction treaty, known as START. The signing of the strategic arms treaty was to have been the centerpiece of the February summit.

“There is nothing really important blocking START,” one official said, “and we’d be flexible about working through the (remaining) issues. But without CFE, we’re less disposed to go out of our way for the Soviets.”

The remaining issues in the strategic arms talks are “gruesomely technical,” said another official, following compromises on several matters such as the location of U.S. and Soviet missile production facilities to be permanently monitored.

The unresolved questions involve how to guard against the possibility that missiles will be capable of carrying more warheads than expected and how to ensure that test-flight data are radioed back for all sides to intercept to prevent unauthorized testing.