U.S., Soviets Sign Historic Treaty to Cut Nuclear Arms : Summit: START pact will slash long-range strategic weapons. But President Bush is cool to Gorbachev’s call for new talks aimed at even deeper reductions.

President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed a historic and long-awaited treaty cutting their nations’ nuclear arsenals Wednesday, but they neared the end of their two-day summit meeting here still far apart on the future of arms control.

With the new treaty, the two countries “reverse a half-century of steadily growing strategic arsenals,” Bush said. “More than that, we take a significant step forward in dispelling a half-century of mistrust.”

In private meetings and public statements, however, Gorbachev pushed for an early new round of arms talks aimed at far deeper cuts. “This is a beginning,” Gorbachev said in a brief speech before signing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. “Let us get down to work again.”

Bush, who spoke just after Gorbachev, pointedly avoided any mention of a new round of arms talks. Later, his chief START negotiator, Linton Brooks, conceded at a briefing for reporters that “the Administration does not yet have a position” on where to go next.

The treaty, signed by Bush and Gorbachev at a solemn ceremony in the ornate St. Vladimir Hall of the Great Palace of the Kremlin, limits each side to 1,600 strategic weapons--intercontinental ballistic missiles, bombers, submarine-launched missiles and the like.

The document, which must still be ratified by the Senate and by the Supreme Soviet, also limits each side to 4,900 missile warheads. Those restrictions will require each side to destroy hundreds of missiles, the delivery vehicles that carry the warheads.

Although the signing of the arms treaty was the original reason for holding this summit meeting, arms talks largely took a back seat to other matters here in Moscow. Those matters included superpower cooperation on the Middle East, the deteriorating state of the Soviet economy and the continued political tensions between Gorbachev and Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin.

And the U.S. reluctance to head right back to the negotiating table likely means that--in the short term, at least--superpower talks on new arms-control agreements will be on hold.

Bush’s resistance to plunging ahead reflects two fundamental realities. First, although he and his aides are careful to say publicly that the START treaty is “balanced” and “in the best interests of both sides,” they privately agree with the widely held view among arms-control experts that the United States won most of the key points in the final rounds.

Having come out ahead, they see little incentive to hurry into new talks.

Secondly, reaching agreement required intensive negotiations not only between Washington and Moscow but also within the U.S. government, where different military services, advocates of various types of weapons and partisans of opposing theories of nuclear deterrence have their own opinions as to the shape of an ideal military balance.

And politically, at least, the White House has little appetite for renewing those disputes, especially with a presidential election on the horizon.

For example, the United States succeeded in keeping all mention of naval arms control out of the new treaty. The Soviets have made clear that in any new talks they would insist on placing some restrictions on the huge U.S. advantage at sea. Although some U.S. officials might be willing to consider some reductions in return for Soviet concessions, the Navy has been bitterly opposed, and the admirals have considerable political clout.

The two sides also remain far apart on the subject of defenses against missile attacks.

Before the Moscow summit, Bush’s national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, told reporters that he thought the Soviets, who strongly opposed former President Ronald Reagan’s idea of a space-based “Star Wars” anti-missile shield, might be more amenable to the Administration’s current plans. These call for a much smaller system aimed at stopping accidental missile launches or attacks by smaller countries that might one day possess nuclear arms.

But although Bush made a pitch to Gorbachev about the benefits of such a program, Gorbachev gave no indications of a change in position, officials said.

The Soviets have insisted on strict compliance with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which allows each nation to build only one facility for shooting down incoming missiles. The Administration’s plan would call for several sites, although a version of the plan being debated in Congress would be limited to only one site, at least initially.

Despite the disagreements over the future, the massive and complicated treaty signed Wednesday remains a major milestone--the first treaty ever to require both nuclear superpowers to make substantial reductions in their strategic arsenals.

Under the agreement, warheads will not have to be destroyed, but they will be stored in ways that will allow the other side to guarantee against cheating--part of the treaty’s extensive provisions designed to ensure that the promises in it can be verified and monitored.

Overall, the treaty will require both sides to cut their total forces by roughly one-third, with the Soviets making somewhat deeper cuts than the United States. The Soviet weapons that U.S. strategists have considered the most threatening--warheads based on the largest land-based missiles--will have to be reduced by half.

The treaty, negotiator Brooks noted, was designed not only to cut forces but to restructure them. The pact contains incentives designed to prod both sides into relying more on bombers and less on missiles for nuclear deterrence. Because missiles can cross the globe in a matter of minutes and can be launched without warning, arms experts consider them more dangerous and thus more destabilizing than bombers.

St. Vladimir Hall, site of the treaty ceremony, was the same room used by Gorbachev and Reagan when they exchanged the formal ratification documents for the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and, earlier, by President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev in signing the SALT I pact.

With their wives, top aides and arms negotiators on hand, the two men signed the formal documents with pens fashioned by a Soviet artist out of metal taken from U.S. Pershing 2 and Soviet SS-20 missiles destroyed under the INF treaty.

Each signed four times, approving both an English and a Russian text of the treaty and a translation performed by each side. Earlier in the day, at Gorbachev’s suburban dacha , the two had signed separate protocols and annexes to the main treaty text.

Although the text itself runs 47 pages, the separate documents bring the total package to about 750 pages, making the treaty one of the longest and most complex in the history of international affairs. Negotiators worked on the final language of the pact at their offices in Geneva until 2 a.m. Monday morning, then hand-carried the final text here Tuesday.

As late as Wednesday morning, they were still correcting typographical errors on the formal documents, officials said.

Already, the treaty has been subject to criticism. Some Soviet legislators complain that Gorbachev and his negotiators gave up too much, and some conservative members of the U.S. Senate complain that the Soviets gave up too little.

Before the final agreements on the treaty were reached, however, Gorbachev won the approval of top military officials, virtually guaranteeing approval. And on the U.S. side, Administration strategists are convinced that at most a handful of senators will oppose ratification.

As they wrapped up their talks here, the two leaders issued several other documents, including a statement deploring the violence in Yugoslavia and urging peace talks there and an agreement approving previously announced steps toward cooperation in space. The two governments also prepared a joint statement on Central America to be released today that will call for peaceful resolution of conflicts in that region.

Earlier in the day, Bush placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier next to the Kremlin wall and spoke to Soviet business people, telling them they were building a “bridge to a new and prosperous Soviet Union.”

“Those who succeed here should not be insulted and labeled as speculators and exploiters,” he said. “They are the people who will fill the shelves in your stores, put your people to work.” Soviet leaders, he said, “are grasping the concept” that “the spirit of democratic capitalism” will be the key to “bringing back hope to the people of the Soviet Union.”

Today, after a formal departure ceremony at the Kremlin, Bush is scheduled to fly to Kiev, where he will address leaders of the Ukraine--the second-largest of the Soviet Union’s 15 republics--and speak at the memorial at Babi Yar, scene of one of the most grisly massacres of the Nazi Holocaust.

Next Step: What the Arms Treaty Will Do

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) cuts nuclear weapons held by the Soviet Union and by the United States and establishes a system to guard against cheating. Some key facts:

SIGNIFICANCE: It is the first time the United States and the Soviet Union have agreed to reduce their arsenals of long-range nuclear bombers, missiles and submarines. Soviets will cut stockpiles by 36%, the U.S. by 29%.

CEILINGS: There is an overall ceiling of 4,900 ballistic missile warheads. To reach that goal, the Soviets will have to cut about 48% and the U.S. about 39%.

RESULTS: Experts estimate that the Soviets are likely to end up with 8,000 nuclear warheads, the U.S. with 10,400. The weapons under discussion are those that can be delivered by bombers or intercontinental ballistic missiles, those that can fly 3,400 miles--roughly the distance from the U.S. East Coast to the western border of the Soviet Union.

OTHER WEAPONS: Not all weapons covered by the treaty will be reduced. Bombers and air-launched cruise missiles actually could increase. Sea-launched cruise missiles will not be monitored, but the two sides are promising--in a side letter outside the treaty--to limit their arsenals of this weapon to 880 missiles apiece.

U.S. GAINS: From the U.S. standpoint, the main gain under the treaty is that the Soviets must cut their force of SS-18 missiles, their most potent long-range weapon, from 308 to 154. The treaty also bans new types of heavy missiles.

VERIFICATION: There is no 100% foolproof guarantee, but there are 12 types of inspections outlined in the treaty, some on little notice. Still, such weapons as mobile missiles are hard to keep track of, although they must be displayed under the treaty. U.S. inspectors will go to the Soviet missile facilities and production plants. The Soviets will make reciprocal inspections.

TIMING: It will take seven years to reach the reductions once the treaty is ratified by the U.S. Senate and the Supreme Soviet.

Source: Times Wire Services