Russia Offers Deeper Cuts in Nuclear Arsenal : Arms: U.S. had demanded even more reductions. Still, officials on both sides hope for a compromise.

Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev proposed a nuclear weapons deal Monday that would cut Moscow’s arsenal much faster and deeper than planned, but it appeared to go only partway toward a U.S. demand for the elimination of Russia’s most powerful missiles.

“We are striving for an agreement that won’t jeopardize the national interest of either side, not even hypothetically,” Kozyrev told reporters after more than five hours of talks with Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

U.S. and Russian officials said both sides hope to reach agreement today on the outlines of a deal that could be concluded when Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and President Bush meet at the White House next week.

The Administration hopes for a quick agreement, in part because it would enhance Bush’s image as a world leader in the midst of a tough reelection campaign, one official said.

Baker and Kozyrev refused to discuss the specifics of the talks, but Russian officials said both sides presented proposals for the next stage of cuts in their long-distance nuclear arsenals, the weapons that maintained a “balance of terror” during the Cold War.

One U.S. official said Bush Administration arms control experts are divided over the merits of the Russian plan. “The makings of a compromise are there . . . but it will require some more flexibility from our side as well as theirs,” said the official, who has privately criticized the rigidity of the Administration’s position.

U.S. and Russian officials said Moscow’s plan essentially embraces Bush’s proposal to lower the nuclear ceilings of last year’s Strategic Arms Reduction Talks treaty but allows Russia to keep many of its multiple-warhead missiles.

The Administration has been pressing for a ban on land-based missiles with multiple warheads because U.S. strategists believe those are the most dangerous weapons in either side’s nuclear arsenal. But they are also the core of Russia’s nuclear force, unlike the more diversified U.S. arsenal.

Russia’s willingness to accept the lower ceiling would effectively speed up the pace of eliminating strategic nuclear weapons during the seven years that the strategic arms treaty would remain in effect. That period would end in 1999 if ratification is completed this year.

As signed last July by the United States and the Soviet Union, the treaty would officially allow each side to have 6,000 long-range nuclear weapons.

In Bush’s State of the Union message in January, he called for cutting the overall ceiling under the treaty to 4,700 weapons for each side, with the cuts to occur during the treaty’s seven-year term. Yeltsin responded by proposing to reduce the limit on weapons to 2,500--but the U.S. side says it turned out he was thinking not of the coming seven years but a much longer period.

“Under the original Russian offer, START would have proceeded as written, with Yeltsin’s 2,500-weapon goal as a second phase to be reached about the year 2005 or 2010,” explained one U.S. official. “But our proposal is to change the START ceilings. At first, the Russians rejected this speedup, but now they have accepted it.”

Kozyrev first told Baker of the revised Russian position in Lisbon two weeks ago at a brief meeting during a conference on aid to states of the former Soviet Union. But at the time, he showed little flexibility on the second key component of the Bush offer, the elimination of multiple-warhead land-based missiles, U.S. officials say.

The Administration has not spelled out whether the two parts of its offer--the lower ceiling and the multiple-warhead ban--represent an all-or-nothing package. The officials suggested, however, that the multiple-warhead ban is more important.

In Lisbon, Kozyrev said that Moscow would be prepared to reduce its multiple-warhead force in proportion to its overall weapon cuts under the new treaty ceiling. That position suggested that Russia is prepared to accept further limits on the missiles, the probable ground for a compromise.

But U.S. officials expressed concerns that Russian military hard-liners may attack Russian acceptance of the warhead ban as another giveaway to the United States.

The prospect of a significant breakthrough is further complicated by the fragmentation of the former Soviet Union into four nations with nuclear weapons on their territory. Ratification hearings on the treaty are due to begin in the Senate this month, and the Soviet successor states that have the weapons--Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan--also must ratify the pact.

Bush and Yeltsin also are expected to endorse in general terms the concept of a joint global anti-missile network to protect against accidental launches and Third World aggression. But U.S. officials doubt that the two leaders will reach any firm commitment in principle on such a network.

Complicating the defense issue is the ambivalent Russian stand on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which bars testing and deploying of antimissile devices such as interceptors and sensors in space, the officials say.

Moscow has reaffirmed its firm commitment to the ABM Treaty. But it also has said that it wants to join in some limited “Star Wars” network such as a joint early warning system against Third World and accidental missile attacks. Such a system could infringe on treaty restrictions.