Tentative Pact OKd on Deeper Arms Cuts in Europe

New and lower limits on tanks and other nonnuclear weapons in Europe would be imposed under a framework agreement reached Wednesday in Vienna by negotiators for 30 countries, including Russia and the United States.

With NATO due to expand eastward, absorbing three former Russian allies, the negotiators agreed to set limits on the military equipment that could be stockpiled in Central Europe.

But that would also limit how many tanks, armored combat vehicles and artillery pieces Russia could move westward into Belarus or other neighboring cooperative countries.

And the 30 countries agreed that the ceilings would not prevent the temporary deployment of additional weapons in the area.

Robert Bell of the National Security Council called the tentative accord a “remarkable example of the kind of cooperative effort” the United States and Russia are making on arms control issues.

“Cooperation, not confrontation” marked the Vienna talks, which began in February, Bell said. It could take a year, though, to complete the revision of the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, which now will set limits for individual countries, not NATO and the former Warsaw Pact.

Under the treaty, approved by the U.S. Senate in 1992, more than 50,000 pieces of combat equipment were eliminated.