Bush Corrects Yeltsin, Reports Arms Pact Isn’t Ready to Sign

President Bush said Sunday that the United States and Russia are not yet ready to sign a treaty that would cut their nuclear arsenals by two-thirds, despite an optimistic forecast last week by Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.

Bush told reporters that he talked with Yeltsin by telephone for 35 minutes Sunday morning from the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., and discovered that there still are some details to pin down in the proposed strategic arms reduction pact commonly called START II.

“I can tell you it’s not agreed totally,” Bush said, adding, “We’ve made some real progress.” Bush said that he and Yeltsin also discussed the idea of signing the treaty together in Alaska sometime next month but that they did not set a date.

Yeltsin surprised U.S. officials last week when he declared in Beijing that the arms agreement was ready for signing before Bush leaves office Jan. 20.

U.S. officials said they had hoped that Yeltsin’s statement meant he had accepted a set of U.S. proposals offered last week to bridge the remaining gaps between the two sides. But Bush’s terse description of his conversation Sunday suggested that Yeltsin was merely speaking “imprecisely,” as one official put it.

“The START II treaty between America and Russia on global cuts and the destruction of strategic nuclear weapons can be signed in the beginning of next January,” Yeltsin had said. “In January, we’ll sign this treaty.”

Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger said Sunday that he still hopes that Yeltsin’s statement means the Russians have accepted the U.S. proposals--”but I’m not sure.”

“We may be closer, but as far as I know, we don’t have an agreement yet,” Eagleburger said on NBC television’s “Meet the Press.”

The treaty, which Bush and Yeltsin worked out in outline form last June, would slash each country’s nuclear arsenal from more than 12,000 warheads each to a maximum of 3,500. It would also require the Russians to give up their largest and most dangerous nuclear missile, the huge SS-18.

The delay in signing has come because Russian negotiators have asked for three changes in the pact. First, they want to use the underground silos built for the SS-18 to house smaller missiles to save on construction costs.

Second, they want to turn the multiple-warhead SS-19 missile into a single-warhead missile by simply removing warheads, also to save on costs. Third, they want the U.S. Air Force to accept stricter limits on its ability to switch bombers between nuclear and non-nuclear duties, to make it more difficult for the United States to violate the treaty.

U.S. negotiators reportedly have offered compromises on the SS-19 and Air Force issues but have dug in their heels on the question of the silos.