U.S., Russia Fail to Complete Arms Treaty

Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev said Sunday that they have made “good progress” but were unable to wrap up the details of a proposed treaty to destroy two-thirds of their nations’ nuclear arsenals within the next 10 years.

At a joint press conference, both men insisted that it remains possible to complete the pact before President Bush leaves office Jan. 20 despite the distractions of the U.S. transition and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s political problems.

“We’re not there yet, but I think today we made some progress,” Eagleburger said after their three-hour meeting at the Russian Embassy. “We have not yet reached the end of the road.”

Last June, Bush and Yeltsin agreed in principle to reduce their stocks of nuclear weapons from about 10,000 each to between 3,000 and 3,500 by the year 2003. They also agreed to a total ban on land-based intercontinental missiles with more than one warhead. Submarine-carried multiple-warhead missiles would continue to be permitted.

The drafting process of the treaty has now dragged on for almost six months, a month longer than it took to negotiate the basic framework.

Eagleburger and Kozyrev said they will probably meet again before Jan. 20 to make a final attempt to complete the treaty before President-elect Bill Clinton takes office.

Although Clinton has not said much about the pact--called START II for the second Strategic Arms Reduction Talks treaty--even if he embraces the Bush-Yeltsin framework it would take months for the incoming State Department to gear up to complete the negotiations.

There was a surrealistic side to the Eagleburger-Kozyrev meeting, held in the Swedish capital on the eve of a meeting of foreign ministers of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe that both men will attend starting today. Eagleburger had just 39 days left in office, and Kozyrev--a lightning rod for Yeltsin’s hard-line opponents in the Russian Parliament--might secretly wish his tenure were even that long.

But Kozyrev brushed aside suggestions that Yeltsin’s government may be so embattled at home that it could not complete the treaty. If he and Eagleburger can finish the drafting, Kozyrev said, Yeltsin will be ready and able to sign it.

A senior State Department official said the Bush Administration wants to complete the treaty “but not at the cost of the substance of the agreement.”