U.S. Reportedly Sends New Arms-Cut Plan to Soviets

WASHINGTON —  The United States has sent a proposal to the Soviet Union for settlement of its dispute with Moscow over Soviet efforts to circumvent the treaty cutting conventional forces in Europe, U.S. sources said Wednesday.

Officials here hope that the plan will end the controversy and lead to completion of a new nuclear missile agreement as well as a U.S.-Soviet summit meeting in Moscow soon.

The proposal, sent to Moscow and outlined to a North Atlantic Treaty Organization group in Brussels on Tuesday, would require the Soviets to withdraw at least two-thirds of about 5,400 pieces of contested weaponry from Europe and subsequently destroy them, sources said.

It would not make the Soviets explicitly admit error--”publicly eat crow,” as one official said--for trying to get around treaty limits. However, Moscow would acknowledge that the entire episode was a “onetime action” that neither it nor any of the other 20 nations signing the treaty would attempt to repeat.

The Soviets would be allowed to keep 1,700 armored combat vehicles--arguably the most benign of the treaty-limited weapons--that are assigned to their long-range nuclear missile forces. The rationale is that these weapons are necessary to protect nuclear weapons and their storage depots in case of civil disorders there.

Under the U.S. proposal, the vehicles would be technically exempted by being classified as weapons assigned to internal security duties, rather than to a Soviet military arm, although the strategic rocket forces that use them clearly are part of the Soviet military.

The U.S. offer is less demanding than Washington’s earlier position, which required that the Soviets openly admit error. “Our minimum requirement (for settlement) is that the Soviets cannot gain through the outcome by this kind of conniving,” one official explained. “But we’re not overly rigid. We don’t expect them to say ‘uncle’ and eat humble pie.”

The shift came “because of present circumstances in the Soviet Union,” said another official. “Conditions are fragile, almost chaotic there. We want to get this behind us before we lose it, before maybe there are leadership changes,” he said. “The treaty is in our interest as well as theirs.”

The disputed weaponry amounts to less than 5% of the total number of tanks, artillery, armored combat vehicles, helicopters and planes that the Soviet Union must withdraw from its European territory and destroy. All told, the Soviets would destroy six times more equipment than would NATO.