Shevardnadze Gives Bush New Arms Proposals

WASHINGTON — Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze presented significant new proposals to President Bush on Thursday in an effort to break the logjam in strategic arms reduction talks, U.S. and Soviet officials said.

The two sides also agreed that a “general time frame” for the next U.S.-Soviet summit should be found during discussions in Wyoming this weekend between Shevardnadze and Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

Baker, after nearly two hours of talks between Bush and Shevardnadze, said the Soviet foreign minister presented a “long, detailed and technical” letter to Bush from President Mikhail S. Gorbachev containing “some new twists” on previous Soviet arms positions.

Among those twists were “some concessions,” Baker said, although they included “some ambiguities.” He declined to elaborate.

Among Key Obstacles

A senior Soviet official later said the Gorbachev letter included two major position changes involving anti-missile defenses and sea-launched cruise missiles, both of which are among key obstacles to concluding a broad new agreement in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks, known as START.

Knowledgeable U.S. officials characterized the change in the Soviet position on missile defenses as “important” and “of some significance.”

They attached less importance to the cruise missile position. One U.S. official said it was “nothing new--well-plowed ground.”

“The words need to be sorted out,” said one official. “There is a lot of elliptical language that needs to be nailed down. It’s a very important letter, but not a breakthrough on every issue.”

After the meeting with Bush, Shevardnadze and Baker flew to Jackson Hole, Wyo., to begin an intensive weekend of discussions on the proposals contained in the letter as well as a broad range of U.S.-Soviet relations, including a date for the next summit.

En route to Wyoming, Baker and Shevardnadze huddled in their shirtsleeves in the forward cabin of Baker’s U.S. Air Force DC-9 for more than three hours, holding what a senior U.S. official called “a very intense and unusual kind of discussion.”

Gesticulating frequently, sometimes almost nose-to-nose, they debated two issues that have bedeviled Gorbachev’s reform program: the upsurge of separatist movements among the Soviet Union’s nationalities, and the Kremlin’s inability to get serious economic reforms under way.

The U.S. official, who participated in the discussion, said Shevardnadze admitted that the Kremlin had “made mistakes in the past” in dealing with minorities and said that “autonomy was going to become, much more, the hallmark of the relationship.”

U.S. intelligence analysts have said that the challenge to Moscow’s power from several nationalities, especially in the Baltic states, is Gorbachev’s most serious political problem and could lead to repressive measures. But Shevardnadze appeared to say that the Soviet leader has decided on a conciliatory tack instead.

Before they left Washington, Baker had hinted that a Bush-Gorbachev meeting, the first since Bush’s election as President, might occur “next year.” But he then suggested that “next year” was a theoretical time frame.

Baker provided no reason why a new summit would be scheduled at this time, given Bush’s remarks earlier this week that he was in “no rush” for such a meeting.

“It’s important that they (Bush and Gorbachev) get together from time to time and talk about the full range of the problems between these two countries,” Baker said. “The President feels that he could productively spend time talking about these issues, face to face, with the leader of the Soviet Union.”

Bush and Shevardnadze also touched upon other issues in their discussions at the White House.

Bush complained about continued weapons shipments to Nicaragua by Soviet Bloc nations, including Cuba, despite a Gorbachev statement that Soviet supplies had ceased. Shevardnadze replied that Moscow was “not totally in control of what happens with Cuba,” Baker said, adding, “We have some difficulty in believing that.”

Bush complimented Moscow on its approach to Eastern European nations that are striving for greater democracy and economic independence.

Baker quoted the President as saying that “the Soviet Union had proceeded very responsibly and in a very measured way, with respect to changes that are taking place--not just in the Soviet Union, but in Eastern Europe as well.” Bush also “expressed our desire to see that type of an approach continue,” Baker said.

On arms control, the Gorbachev letter accepted in principle a U.S.-backed “open skies” proposal under which one nation’s aircraft would make surveillance flights over the other’s territory, according to U.S. and Soviet officials.

The letter also endorsed the concept of testing verification procedures for a START agreement, even before a treaty on strategic arms is signed and ratified, to ensure that they work.

Primary attention was focused, however, on the key issues of strategic defenses and sea-launched cruise missiles, since these are among the final roadblocks to a START treaty.

The basic difference between the superpowers on missile defenses is that the Soviets want the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty reaffirmed based on its narrow interpretation--that it bans tests of anti-missile weapons in space. The United States, however, contends that the treaty permits such tests.

Moscow has argued that if the United States intends to develop missile defenses, it cannot sign a START agreement that cuts offensive nuclear weapons in half because extra offensive weapons would be needed to overcome such defenses.

Some easing of the Soviet position has been reported recently, such as allowing certain kinds of tests in certain regions of space. Whether Moscow has formally accepted this idea, which was broached by some U.S. negotiators but rejected by the Reagan Administration, is not known.

The Bush Administration inherited the anti-missile Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars” program, from the Reagan Administration but has been less committed to it. Coincidentally, the retirement of Ambassador Henry Cooper, who has led the U.S. delegation to the Geneva talks on this issue, is seen as a possible signal of U.S. willingness to compromise on “Star Wars,” since his successor reportedly is less adamant about championing the controversial program.

U.S.-Soviet differences over sea-launched cruise missiles, or SLCMs, also run deep.

The United States intends to deploy, without negotiated limits, both nuclear-tipped and conventionally armed cruise missiles that can be launched from surface ships and submarines. The Soviets want to limit the number and range of nuclear SLCMs to prevent the winged weapons from being used to circumvent the cuts in ballistic missiles envisaged in START. Distinguishing between nuclear and conventional SLCMs is impossible without intolerable on-ship inspections, the United States claims.

U.S. officials said the Soviets have hinted that they might accept SLCMs of longer range than previously, but this is unlikely to break the impasse on the issue.

Instead, senior Administration officials believe that missile defenses and SLCMs will be “end-game” issues at the U.S.-Soviet talks and that one may be traded for the other, such as Soviet permission for anti-missile testing in exchange for a U.S. ban on nuclear SLCMs.

Times staff writers Norman Kempster in Washington and Doyle McManus in Wyoming contributed to this report.