U.S. Aides Can’t Agree on START Treaty : Arms control: The debate in Washington has slowed progress on a pact with the Soviet Union to reduce long-range nuclear weapons.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III said Wednesday that the Bush Administration has been unable to resolve internal disputes over several issues in the proposed U.S.-Soviet treaty to reduce long-range nuclear weapons, posing an obstacle to the completion of a pact that President Bush has said he wants to sign this month.

Baker may meet this week in Europe with Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander A. Bessmertnykh in an attempt to resolve some of the remaining issues in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which has been under negotiation for six years, U.S. officials said.

But his ability to break the last logjams in the talks may be limited by the Administration’s own problems in agreeing on the U.S. negotiating position, they said. The treaty, which is almost complete, would reduce the two superpowers’ arsenals of long-range nuclear missiles and bombs by about 30%.

Officials traveling with Baker expressed confidence that the Administration would resolve its internal disagreements quickly to enable Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev to sign the completed treaty at their summit. Bush and Gorbachev have said they hope to hold the summit by the end of this month.

But in response to questions about the slow pace of the negotiations, they quickly pointed to the internal U.S. debate--making the implicit point that Baker is not at fault for the delay.

“We are in the process of discussing this issue internally,” Baker said. “I do think it is the clear desire of both sides . . . to see more intensive engagement of the START negotiators. You can’t do that without giving them some directions and some positions and some marching orders.”

That is exactly what the Administration has been unable to do so far, another official pointed out.

“They’re working on it seriously . . . but there is still no agreement on some of these issues,” the official said.

“To be fair, nobody has been focused on this at the top level,” she added. “They’ve been focused on other things up until now.”

As a result, the Administration’s top START negotiator, Undersecretary of State Reginald Bartholomew, was still waiting Wednesday in Washington for instructions before traveling to Geneva for talks with Soviet negotiators.

Asked whether the delay in reaching a START agreement would hold up the planned Bush-Gorbachev summit, Baker said only: “Both of the leaders would like to see a START treaty as part of the next summit.”

An Administration official traveling with Baker added that it is still unclear whether the summit can be held by the end of June. “That may or may not be possible,” he said.

The main issues under debate inside the Administration are technical yet still significant, officials said.

One question is how many missiles each side can deploy with “empty spaces” for added nuclear warheads. Some experts fear that this practice, known as “downloading,” could make it easy for the Soviets to violate the treaty by adding warheads later. The treaty limits each side to 1,600 missiles and 6,000 warheads. Many missiles carry more than one warhead.

A second unresolved issue is how hard the United States should press the Soviet Union to transmit data from missile tests for U.S. experts to analyze. Test flights send a stream of data back to their ground stations in radio broadcasts. The Soviets transmit much of their data in code, but the United States maintains that the data should be available openly to allow each side to make sure the other is complying with treaty restrictions.

Baker spoke to reporters en route to a meeting of foreign ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Copenhagen.

He said the two-day NATO meeting will focus on the development of a “European security pillar.” The idea, promoted by several European countries, is of a defense organization that would not include the United States and Canada.

The Bush Administration has supported the still-hazy concept of a European security pillar as long as it does not detract from NATO’s role, which Baker has called “the principal venue for consultation” on Western defense issues.

France, traditionally suspicious of American primacy in Europe, has pressed for a more independent European role. French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas told a meeting of Western European foreign ministers on Tuesday, “It is not up to NATO to tell Europeans what they must or must not do.”

On another issue, Baker said the Administration has not received responses from Israel and its Arab neighbors to Bush’s appeal for a compromise on the structure of a Middle East peace conference.

Bush and Baker have tried to arrange such a conference for more than three months, without success. Syria has insisted on a conference that could meet several times under United Nations auspices, and Israel has insisted on a conference that could meet only once, with no significant U.N. presence.