U.S. and Russia Agree on Pact to Sharply Cut Nuclear Arms : Diplomacy: Short meeting settles last differences. Nations will cut arsenals by two-thirds. Bush and Yeltsin are almost certain to sign treaty early next month.

With just 23 days left in the Bush Administration, American and Russian negotiators Tuesday wrapped up the most sweeping arms control agreement ever attempted, requiring the two countries to slash their nuclear arsenals by more than two-thirds in the next 10 years.

Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger and the Russian foreign and defense ministers settled the remaining differences over the accord at a meeting that lasted a little more than an hour and a half Tuesday morning after talks the day before that ran until midnight.

With Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev at his side, Eagleburger said the agreement will be sent to President Bush and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin. They will decide if it is good enough for them to sign at a summit early next month.

Bush was on a hunting trip near Beeville, Tex., and had not yet been briefed about the accord.

In Moscow, aides to Yeltsin reportedly were preparing to fly to Sochi, a Russian city on the Black Sea, to make preparations for the summit.

Although Eagleburger and Kozyrev insisted that the presidents will have the last word, it is almost inconceivable that either Bush or Yeltsin would veto a treaty that they approved “in principle” last June. Both presidents have made it clear that they want to sign the pact before Bush turns over the White House to President-elect Bill Clinton on Jan. 20.

“We now have a text that we can put to the two presidents,” Eagleburger said. “The presidents will then have to look at what we have come up with. The final decision will be theirs, and I would hope we would have news for you within the next few days. . . . If there are changes that they’d want to suggest, then obviously we would have to come back together again.”

Although Eagleburger used the word “text,” a senior U.S. official said later that it will take at least three more days for arms control experts to draft the precise treaty language and to ensure that the English and Russian versions are the same.

Nevertheless, Eagleburger, Kozyrev and Russian Defense Minister Pavel S. Grachev said they will immediately brief Bush and Yeltsin on the details of the agreement. Eagleburger flew back to Washington shortly after the meeting ended.

The pact’s basic outlines have been known since Bush and Yeltsin met in Washington in June. It will require the United States and Russia to cut their stocks of long-range nuclear warheads from more than 10,000 each to between 3,000 and 3,500 by the year 2003.

The accord also outlaws ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles with more than one warhead and requires Russia to scrap all of its giant SS-18 rockets, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever deployed, and obligates the United States to eliminate all of its MX missiles.

The new agreement, known as START II, follows the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, signed by Bush and then-Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in 1991.

Bush and Yeltsin, if they approve it, will sign START II at the summit, which probably will occur soon at a site over which there was already much speculation Tuesday.

The Americans and Russians apparently have agreed to conduct the summit in Sochi, with a possible switch at the last minute to another venue, perhaps Geneva or Paris, the Interfax news agency reported in Moscow.

The plans for Sochi were shaky because Russian security officials reportedly object to the Adler airport nearby, saying it cannot handle Air Force One. There are further concerns over whether the Black Sea resort has the facilities to handle the influx of journalists and dignitaries.

And Russian security officials are reportedly disturbed by the close presence of large numbers of refugees who have fled ethnic warfare in the nearby Abkhazia coastal region of Georgia.

Beyond the presidential approval, the proposed treaty must be ratified by the U.S. Senate and the Russian Parliament.

The pact’s prospects with American lawmakers are generally good, as senators have praised the effort to reduce the world’s nuclear arsenals. The agreement still is likely to receive stern scrutiny from conservative senators; they have expressed concern that the United States may be giving up too much to the Russians, and they distrust their former Communist enemies.

As for the Russians, their lawmakers--many conservative former Communists--recently have become restive with Yeltsin and his government, accusing Kozyrev and others of giving in too easily to the West. During recent discussions of START II, prominent analysts have suggested that submission of the treaty to the Parliament will provoke a firestorm of opposition among Russia’s increasingly powerful right-wing elements.

If the START II pact is not signed before Bush leaves office, at least parts of it would surely have to be renegotiated, delaying or possibly even preventing the elimination of thousands of nuclear weapons.

But in Savannah, Ga., Clinton said he is “encouraged” about prospects for a new arms control treaty and made clear that he favors efforts by the Bush Administration to conclude the accord “as quickly as possible. . . . I think the quicker we can get these kinds of positive results the better.”

As modified earlier this year to take account of the breakup of the Soviet Union, the START I pact requires the United States and Russia to reduce their long-range warheads by about 20% to just over 8,000 each within seven years and requires Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus to get rid of all of their nuclear weaponry.

Ukraine has not yet ratified the pact, and unless its Parliament acts soon, implementation of all START I limits could be delayed. Eagleburger has warned authorities in Kiev that U.S.-Ukraine relations will be seriously damaged if Ukraine does not ratify and implement the treaty soon.

Negotiations on the START I pact began during the Cold War when the United States and the Soviet Union were avowed enemies. But the new treaty is a product of the post-Cold War era in which each country insists it will never make war on the other but neither wants the other to gain strategic superiority. Even after making the deep cuts, the United States and Russia will have far more nuclear weapons than any other power.

A senior State Department official said most remaining disputes were settled Monday evening during a four-hour dinner of shrimp and veal at the Inter-Continental Hotel where the Eagleburger party was housed. But the official said all of the issues were reviewed Tuesday morning to make sure that there were no second thoughts.

In the end, the official said, the United States and Russia agreed that the Russians could retain some of the 154 silos housing SS-18 missiles and could convert some of their six-warhead SS-19 rockets to a single-warhead weapon.

The pact requires the rest of the silos to be destroyed and the remaining SS-19s to be removed from their launch pads and either destroyed or put into supervised storage. But the official refused to reveal the numbers in either category before Bush and Yeltsin decide if they will accept the treaty.

The official said that negotiators agreed to an extremely complex set of rules intended to reassure the Russians that they will be able to identify which American B-1 and B-52 bombers are carrying nuclear weapons and thus must be counted under the treaty limits. The pact permits the United States to convert some of the bombers from nuclear to conventional roles while reserving the right to switch some of them back to nuclear status in the future.

Earlier rules required destruction of the silos of missiles that are taken out of service. Russia agreed in START I to reduce by half its arsenal of 308 SS-18 missiles, destroying all the silos assigned to the rockets. In START II, Russia must get rid of the other 154 missiles. But it will be allowed to keep some silos to house smaller, single-warhead rockets permitted by the new pact.

The final negotiations concerned such arcane issues as the amount of concrete that must be poured into the retained silos to ensure they could never again be used for missiles as big as the SS-18.

START I rules permit the removal of no more than four warheads from multiple-warhead missiles. But the Russians obtained permission to convert some of their six-warhead SS-19s to single-warhead weapons after arguing that without such a relaxation of the rules, they would have to develop a costly new generation of single-warhead missiles.

Times staff writers John-Thor Dahlburg in Moscow, James Gerstenzang in Corpus Christi, Tex., Douglas Jehl in Savannah, Ga., and Melissa Healy in Washington contributed to this report.

Slashing the Stockpiles

The treaty wrapped up by U.S. and Russian negotiators would:

Reduce both nations’ nuclear weapons from the current level of about 10,000 each to between 3,000 and 3,500 by the year 2003.

Ban land-based intercontinental missiles with more than one warhead.

Force the Russians to give up the SS-18 missile, their most dangerous weapon.

Eliminate the U.S. MX missile.

*

POSSIBLE ROADBLOCK

The treaty builds on the earlier Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which itself will only take effect when ratified by Ukraine. But Ukraine has been stalling, and if it continues to delay, the legal edifice of both START accords would be undermined.

*

VOICES ON THE ACCORD

The treaty “promises to be nothing but good for us and for the whole world.”

--Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), a leading member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

*

“It would destroy the launchers and not the missiles themselves. The treaty has never provided for the destruction or dismantling of the nuclear weapons themselves.”

--Edward L. Warner, an arms control expert at the Brookings Institution

*

“We’ve made progress. It’s now up to the presidents to look at the document to decide if we’ve made sufficient progress to sign an agreement.”

--Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger

*

“Two bottles of whiskey, my friend, spasibo (thanks).”

--Eagleburger, right, to Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev on their wager over completing the terms of the pact

Source: Times staff and wire reports