U.S., Russia Narrow Gap on Deep Nuclear Cuts : Arsenals: Baker and his counterpart leave final decisions to Bush and Yeltsin. A treaty could be signed at next week’s summit.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III and his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev, said Friday that they have narrowed their remaining differences over proposals to make deep cuts in nuclear arsenals, probably clearing the way for the first arms-control pact of the post-Cold War era, to be signed next week in Washington.

Baker and Kozyrev were careful to emphasize that the final decisions will not be made until President Bush and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin meet Tuesday and Wednesday in Washington, although Baker suggested that the negotiations have reached the stage of crossing t’s and dotting i’s.

Both men used the same phrase--”we stand a good chance”--to describe the possibility that Bush and Yeltsin will agree on a treaty to reduce by almost half the limits on nuclear weapons imposed by the still-unratified Strategic Arms Reduction Talks treaty, which was signed last July by Bush and then-Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

But with the summit less than a week away, Baker and Kozyrev declined to discuss specific details of the emerging pact.

“I think we have a good chance, but there is not yet an agreement and there won’t be an agreement until the two presidents have had an opportunity to review what was done here today and have their own discussion,” Baker said.

But he implied that Russia gave some ground on a U.S. demand for tough new limits on land-based, multiple-warhead missiles that Washington considers to be the most dangerously destabilizing elements in either nuclear arsenal. Russia had resisted the demand because its huge SS-18s, the largest nuclear missiles now deployed anywhere in the world, form the heart of its strategic force inherited from the Soviet Union.

“We have seen some movement by both sides in an effort to bring about an agreement that would lead to deep reductions in strategic weapons and reductions in the most destabilizing of those weapons,” Baker said.

Baker said he and Kozyrev had agreed on U.S.-Russian cooperation to lift the Serb-led siege of the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo and to end the ethnic fighting in what used to be Yugoslavia.

He supplied few details, although he said the United States is considering an airlift of food and medicine to Sarajevo, where there are daily reports of starvation.

“We have sent our military planners to New York to consult with the United Nations; we are increasing the provision of intelligence support to the United Nations, and . . . generally speaking, in principle, the United States is prepared to support all phases of the (U.N.) humanitarian assistance effort,” Baker said.

But he emphasized that there has been no change in the U.S. refusal to take “unilateral military action” in Yugoslavia.

Baker said that political, diplomatic and economic sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council against Serbia and its tiny ally, Montenegro, are already the strongest measures the world organization has ever ordered against any country other than Iraq. But both men said additional steps may be needed.

Baker’s statements came as the U.S. Senate, in a non-binding resolution, urged the United Nations to consider military intervention in the strife-torn region.

Friday’s hastily called meeting came just two days after Baker and Kozyrev had ended talks in Washington without resolving key differences about new cuts in nuclear arsenals. Although U.S. officials had implied that the London talks might last all weekend, Baker and Kozyrev completed their business in three hours.

U.S. officials are eager to make arms control the centerpiece of the Bush-Yeltsin meeting, the first formal U.S.-Russian summit since the collapse of the Soviet Union. After Bush’s trip to Panama, where the President was forced to flee a city plaza amid a crackdown on protesters, and the controversy that his environmental policies have sparked at the Earth Summit in Brazil, the White House desperately wants a diplomatic success.

Officials suggested earlier that Bush and Yeltsin might sign a vague statement of objectives establishing priorities for future arms-control negotiations if they were unable to agree on a more detailed pact. But Baker made it clear Friday that he expects a specific treaty to emerge from the summit.