U.S. Warms to Binding Cuts in Nuclear Arsenals

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in a shift that could open the way to a new arms deal, signaled Tuesday that the United States is willing to sign a legally binding agreement with Russia to reduce the countries’ nuclear arsenals.

Both the United States and Russia have pledged to cut their arsenals from more than 6,000 deployed warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200, but they have disagreed on whether to make the deal binding.

The Russians have sought a binding written commitment, while American officials have said they preferred an informal, nonbinding arrangement.

At a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Powell said that it was not yet clear whether the agreement would be a treaty or “an executive agreement” that would be presented to Congress. But he said: “We do expect it will be legally binding.”

Another senior U.S. official, who asked to remain unidentified, said later that Powell’s words marked a shift in U.S. policy.

Powell did not detail the terms of an agreement, and he stopped short of committing the United States to the irreversible arms cuts that the Russians have argued are needed. In the Bush administration’s view, setting arms ceilings is a mistake because of the possibility that a new threat will require a renewed buildup.

Some nuclear arms experts speculated that Powell’s statement may mean that the administration is willing to reduce its arsenal and provide the Russians information to verify the cuts, but is not willing to pledge that it won’t expand the arsenal later.

This kind of commitment, though short of what they want, would probably have some value for the Russians, and could be enough to coax them into a deal, some analysts said.

Joseph Cirincione, an arms expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said that while the Russians want “deep, irreversible, verifiable cuts, they might be willing to settle for fairly deep verifiable cuts.”

However, another arms expert argued that unless the United States commits itself to irreversible cuts, the deal will have little value for the Russians.

Removing warheads from its missiles, as the United States has promised, “is a move in the right direction,” said Tom Collina of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that favors arms control. Yet unless the United States commits itself to keep its arsenal smaller, the Russians will not feel safe cutting back, “and you won’t have bought as much security as you could,” he said.

Negotiators for the two countries have held talks recently in hopes of reaching an agreement that Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and President Bush could sign when Bush visits Russia this summer.

Powell’s comments came late in the day Russian time, and Russian officials had no immediate public comment. But the Itar-Tass news agency Monday quoted a Russian diplomatic source saying that “it is quite possible to prepare quickly a new agreement on strategic offensive weapons and strategic stability.”