U.S. May Cut Missiles to Aid Budget, Press Republics

The Bush Administration is mulling a plan for deeper cuts in American nuclear missiles, including those carried aboard submarines, to try to reap more defense savings and inspire a reciprocal weapons reduction by the former Soviet republics, officials said Thursday.

The proposal, which could be completed in time for President Bush’s Jan. 28 State of the Union address, would challenge the Commonwealth of Independent States to dismantle its most potent missiles--those that carry more than a single warhead. The United States, meanwhile, would reduce or eliminate its own arsenal of multiple-warhead missiles and retire several older missile-carrying submarines ahead of schedule.

The package of proposals essentially is a reprise of a 2-year-old Bush initiative that suggested negotiations aimed at eliminating multiple-warhead missiles. But the latest version would make a key concession to the former Soviets, who earlier rejected the Bush initiative because it did not include limits on American submarine-based missiles.

The revised arms package would allow the Pentagon to reap badly needed reductions in its budget over the next five years--a driving force in the formulation of current arms control strategy, according to Administration officials. At the same time, it would offer the Commonwealth a new concession--the inclusion of U.S. submarine-based missiles--to induce those governments to agree to deep cuts in their own arsenals.

The emerging arms control package also would have the effect of reducing the long-range missiles outside Russian territory.

If the Commonwealth agreed to the elimination of multi-warhead missiles, it would have to retire 92 10-warhead SS-24 missiles, deployed in Ukraine, as well as Russia, and 104 10-warhead SS-18s, based in Kazakhstan. Only Belarus and Russia would be left with long-range nuclear missiles on their soil.

Such an initiative would help clarify an increasingly confused U.S. arms control position after the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and could set new, lower limits on the numbers of warheads each side could have, officials said.

Since the treaty was signed in July, 1991, one of its two signatories--the Soviet Union--has disintegrated. And the United States, in an effort to cut the defense budget, has moved to eliminate weapons that played a key role under the treaty.

Production of 75 B-2 bombers, which were to have been the centerpiece of the United States’ arsenal after the treaty took effect, is now to be canceled after 20 are built, Pentagon officials said.

Among arms control experts, a consensus has emerged that any arms agreement following the strategic arms treaty should set a limit of no more than 5,000 warheads in each side’s arsenal. Former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev proposed setting a limit of 3,000 on the arsenals.

Under either set of limits, the United States almost certainly would have to shift warheads off submarines, if it wanted to continue to deploy its nuclear weapons among land-based missiles, bombers and submarines.

Reports of Bush’s plan, first published in Thursday’s editions of the New York Times, drew a generally favorable response on Capitol Hill. Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee, said that negotiating a reduction in the number of multi-warhead missiles would be “very good,” particularly if it were part of a deal in which the former Soviet republics further reduced their land-based missiles.

Paul H. Nitze, a former arms-control negotiator who testified before the Armed Services panel, also endorsed the concept of negotiating a reduction or elimination of multiple-warhead missiles, which he said make “inviting targets” for possible attack. He estimated that the United States and the former Soviet republics could safely pare their strategic stockpiles to between 3,000 and 5,000 warheads on each side, provided they also revamp their forces to reflect the reduced threat.

Times staff writer Art Pine contributed to this article.