Bush, Yeltsin Sign Dramatic Accord Slashing Weapons : Treaty: A tired President crowns his career with a flourish. But the Russian leader is already looking ahead, proposing a summit with Clinton soon.

A jubilant Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and a tired, almost wistful President Bush signed the most sweeping East-West arms reduction accord in history Sunday and voiced optimism about the future of U.S.-Russian ties as Bush prepares to turn over the U.S. helm to President-elect Bill Clinton.

Yeltsin, describing any pause in his contacts with Washington as potentially alarming, announced that he had proposed to Clinton by private message two days ago that they meet in a third country right after the Democratic President-elect is inaugurated.

“After Jan. 20, I suggested immediately meeting somewhere, on neutral ground, to hold a working meeting,” Yeltsin said at a news conference with Bush in the Kremlin.

“It is rare that a week went by that George Bush and I didn’t talk by phone,” Yeltsin said, making a point of lauding the outgoing leader seated to his right. “I hope the new President will take over the baton that is being given to him at such a high level.”

In Hilton Head, S.C., Clinton said that he looks forward to an “early” meeting with Yeltsin but that he has not yet decided when or where such a summit should take place.

“I think that is going to depend in part on the timetable of the Congress and the work that I have to do here on the problems of America,” Clinton said as he headed home to Little Rock, Ark., after a six-day vacation.

Clinton voiced strong praise for Yeltsin’s commitment to democracy and said he believes the Russian leader is committed to “a free and a more prosperous economy in Russia, and I do think the United States has a big stake in the success of freedom and democracy there.”

Here in Moscow on a day of private talks and public ceremony saluting the partnership the two countries are seeking to forge after four decades of Cold War enmity, there was but one jarring note. Bush indicated that disagreements with Russia over how to stop the bloodshed in the former Yugoslav federation have not yet been resolved.

“I came away feeling that we are very, very close,” Bush said. But he declined to say what differences linger.

After Bush landed here Saturday for a final meeting with a Kremlin leader, a senior Administration official said that Bush would seek Yeltsin’s blessing for a proposed U.N. Security Council resolution permitting the use of force against planes that violate the U.N.-designated “no-fly zone” over Bosnia-Herzegovina.

At the news conference, Yeltsin said that more diplomatic efforts are needed to achieve “reconciliation” of the warring sides in Bosnia, implying that it is too early in Moscow’s view to contemplate military action.

It was a brief contradiction on a day highlighted by the signature of the second Strategic Arms Reduction Talks treaty--START II--which mandates a two-thirds reduction in the two countries’ existing strategic nuclear arsenals by the year 2003.

Yeltsin called it “the treaty of hope.”

“Let me tell you,” Bush said, reading from note cards after the signing, “what this treaty means, not for presidents or premiers, not for historians or heads of state, but for parents and for their children: It means a future far more free from fear.”

The 68-year-old Bush, on what was almost certain to be his last day overseas as the most-traveled chief executive in U.S. history, bade farewell to Yeltsin, 61, who called him “my friend George,” in a note of surprising informality to the Russian ear.

Then, after spending just under 24 hours in the Russian capital after a New Year’s visit to the U.S. troops in Somalia and a stop on the way in Saudi Arabia, Bush headed for a five-hour visit to Paris and one more farewell meeting, with French President Francois Mitterrand.

Bush and Yeltsin wound up their official dealings with a morning stroll through the ornate corridors and the snow-crusted streets and courtyards of the Kremlin, with a light flurry of snow falling, and then with two hours of private meetings, capped by the signing of START II in St. Vladimir’s Hall.

In comments at the subsequent news conference, Bush repeatedly recognized the obstacles along Russia’s rocky road to democracy and emphasized that the treaty was in Russia’s interest as well as that of the United States.

“Let me say clearly: We seek no special advantage from Russia’s transformation,” Bush said.

Bucking nationalist and right-wing backlash in his Parliament, which, like the U.S. Senate, must ratify START II before it can be implemented, Yeltsin assured his people that the treaty is not a sellout of their security. Revealing military data to back up his argument, he announced that as of Jan. 1, Russia had 9,915 strategic nuclear warheads.

Even after all the cuts mandated by START II, which will push Russia’s warhead total down to 3,000, his country will boast a “powerful shield which is capable of defending Russia,” Yeltsin declared.

The pact, which has generated little opposition in the United States, is controversial here because it eliminates the keystone of the Soviet-built strategic arsenal--multiple-warhead, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles such as the 10-warhead SS-18.

The United States will get to keep half of its seaborne missiles with more than one warhead, even as it eliminates its own land-based, 10-warhead MXs. At the end of the START II cuts, the United States will have 3,500 warheads, 500 more than Russia.

That has rankled in a country that not too long ago had pretensions of global supremacy. More than 100 Russians who oppose START II gathered in Red Square outside the Kremlin on Sunday, chanting, “Yeltsin sold his soul to Bush!” and carrying the red banners of the old Soviet Union.

Yeltsin acknowledged that there are many enemies of START II in the Supreme Soviet, the legislature that must ratify the treaty. “They are against anything positive that should take place in Russia,” he said, but he predicted a majority vote for ratification.

Given the atrocious state of his country’s economy, Yeltsin may have clinched the argument for most Russians when he said it would be cheaper to scrap the nuclear weapons than to maintain them.

START II can also be implemented three years earlier if Russia receives financial aid to help pay for dismantling warheads, storing their uranium and plutonium charges, blowing up ICBMs and disposing of highly toxic missile fuel.

During the news conference, Yeltsin said Russia and the United States have agreed to share the cost of developing disarmament technologies.

The accord was signed on a heavy white-and-gold desk in St. Vladimir’s Hall, an eight-sided room of the Grand Kremlin Palace used for the signing of important international pacts.

The two presidents--one about to relinquish his office, the other facing unrelenting battles with those who would undercut him--spent five minutes affixing their signatures to the leather-bound documents in English and Russian. Then, a smiling Yeltsin and Bush--more serious with a tired look crossing his face--lifted glasses of champagne and strode over to each other’s delegations to offer quiet salutes.

The U.S. delegation included Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III, a former secretary of state whom Yeltsin fondly addressed as “Jimmy,” and Brent Scowcroft, Bush’s national security adviser.

Reducing the Warheads

START II will cut each side’s warheads to about one-third the current total of about 20,000. May 1972: SALT I signed June 1979: SALT II signed June 1982: START talks begin June 1991: levels Reductions under START agreements

U.S. Russia July 1991 / START I reductions by 1999 8,500 6,500 Dec. 1992 / START II reductions by 2003 3,000 to 3,500 3,000 to 3,500

The other three former Soviet republics with nuclear weapons--Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus--are required to give up their strategic weapons under START I. They are included in the Russian count.

Sources: Arms Control Assn., Congressional Research Service, National Resources Defense Council

Times staff writer Douglas Jehl, in Hilton Head, S.C., contributed to this report.