U.S. Will Speed Troop Pullback From Europe : Defense: Accelerated withdrawal will take place over the next 15 months, officials say.

WASHINGTON —  Although the Persian Gulf War temporarily disrupted the timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Europe, the Pentagon plans to accelerate the troop cuts over the next 15 months, officials said Tuesday.

Congress had ordered the military to bring home 40,000 of the 305,000 troops stationed in Europe by the end of September, but Defense Department spokesman Pete Williams said the Pentagon will be unable to meet the goal. Instead, U.S. troop strength in Europe will decline by only 24,600 men and women this year, he said.

“We are simply not going to make the 40,000 reduction, because so many forces in Europe . . . participated in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm,” Williams said. More than 125,000 Europe-based U.S. Army and Air Force personnel served in the Gulf during the war.

However, he said, by the end of September, 1992, U.S. forces in Europe will be reduced by between 82,600 and 86,600 as part of a long-term drawdown of American troops to reflect diminished tensions between the Soviet Union and the West.

By 1995, officials have said, the United States plans to have at most 150,000 troops in Europe, although Congress is considering even deeper cuts as the possibility of a short-notice Soviet attack on Western Europe has evaporated. Many in Congress argue that the United States needs fewer than 50,000 troops in Europe as part of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization rapid-reaction force that can be reinforced if war breaks out.

Williams and other officials said that Tuesday’s announcement did not signal a change in overall U.S. planning for troop deployments in Europe, merely an adjustment of the schedule for withdrawal.

“What we are saying here is that we have not been able to withdraw U.S. units, Army and Air Force, from the European Command as quickly as we had originally planned as we moved through the drawing-down of forces worldwide to meet our plans for restructuring the force in the next four or five years,” Williams said.

“Desert Shield and Desert Storm delayed the drawdown from Europe, so we are now setting a new target for ourselves and working out now in an orderly way how we are going to get there. But it’s more of a timing question than it is a total size of the reduction.”

Congress approved the delay last month after Defense Secretary Dick Cheney requested a waiver of the 40,000 reduction, Williams said.

By September, 1992, officials said, U.S. troop strength in Europe will be about 219,800, including 152,000 Army and 67,800 Air Force personnel.

The U.S. military will shrink by 25%--a total of 500,000 troops--over the next five years in response to budgetary pressures and the end of the Cold War. Forces in Europe, Asia and in the United States will be retired, bases closed and recruiting slowed to accomplish the reductions.