Once Again, No Agreement on Arms Pact

Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev said they made progress Monday but were unable to reach final agreement on a historic arms control pact that would reduce Russia’s and America’s nuclear arsenals by two-thirds.

Eagleburger and Kozyrev, joined by Russian Defense Minister Pavel S. Grachev, scheduled another meeting today in what shapes up as a last-chance attempt to complete the accord before President Bush leaves office Jan. 20.

“We’re making progress,” Eagleburger told reporters before hosting the Russian delegation at a dinner. Asked if he remains confident that agreement can be reached, Eagleburger said: “I can’t tell you. We will work as hard as we can.”

A senior State Department official said Eagleburger plans to return to Washington late today whether or not an agreement has been reached. “We are getting right down to the end of the process,” the official said.

The official said negotiators narrowed the gap on all three remaining disputes, although none were settled Monday during a long, one-on-one meeting between Eagleburger and Kozyrev and in later negotiations between arms control experts.

As the talks began Monday, a seemingly optimistic Kozyrev told reporters, “I’m ready to bet a bottle of whiskey and say that we will do such work here which will make it possible for our presidents” to sign a treaty early next month. Asked before the dinner if he was still confident that he would win his bet, Kozyrev said, “So far, my glass is full.”

Eagleburger had said earlier that chances of agreement were better than even, although he said he did not know how much better. The failure to complete the treaty came as a disappointment to Eagleburger, who told reporters during his flight to Geneva on Sunday that he expected the talks to wind up Monday.

“Obviously, if necessary, I’d be willing to stay longer, but I can’t necessarily believe that it should take more than one day to get these issues settled,” he said then.

At the same time, Eagleburger said the meeting almost surely marks the last chance to complete the treaty in time for Bush to sign it. If the pact is not completed before President-elect Bill Clinton’s inauguration, at least some aspects of the complex document must be renegotiated.

“I can personally see no way, if we don’t get it settled this time, that there’s any chance of getting it settled in time to do a summit in early January,” Eagleburger said.

If signed by Bush and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, the treaty would remain in force even if there are governmental changes in both countries. Officials want to tie down the agreements that have already been made as soon as possible.

Bush and Yeltsin signed a “framework agreement” last June pledging to reduce their nuclear arsenals from about 10,000 warheads on each side to between 3,000 and 3,500 by the year 2003. But the task of drafting detailed treaty language, once expected to be completed in a few weeks, has dragged on for more than six months.