U.S., Soviet Troop Limits Disputed : Europe: Deterioration of Moscow’s position has undercut the accepted limit of 195,000. Secretary of State Baker says now the size of American forces is ‘very much in the air.’

WASHINGTON —  Secretary of State James A. Baker III declared Monday that the landmark U.S.-Soviet agreement on troop ceilings in Europe, reached only seven months ago, has been “overtaken by events” and that the future level of U.S. forces on the Continent is “very much in the air.”

Baker’s statement confirmed that the issue of East-West forces levels was not resolved at the Helsinki summit Sunday. It will be taken up by Baker, who was in Brussels on Monday, during a visit to Moscow this week. Earlier this year, the two sides had agreed that U.S. and Soviet troop levels in Central Europe would have a ceiling of 195,000 each.

The Soviets essentially want to renegotiate manpower and other key ceilings in the treaty on conventional forces in Europe. But the United States and its allies do not want to reopen weapons limits and prefer--now that the Soviets have raised the troop question again--to eliminate all constraints on manpower because, in practice, they would apply only to U.S. forces.

Unless these differences can be ironed out soon, U.S. officials fear that negotiators will be unable to complete the conventional forces treaty before a Nov. 19 deadline when an all-European meeting is to sign the agreement.

The Soviets want to renegotiate downward the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-Warsaw Pact limits on manpower, tanks and other weapons because of the radical deterioration of their political and military situation in Eastern Europe in the last year. Moscow has agreed to pull all its forces out of Eastern Europe in five years, and the Warsaw Pact has shown that it no longer exists as a military alliance.

“This new situation must be adequately reflected in the treaty,” said Oleg A. Grinevsky, Moscow’s chief negotiator at the conventional forces talks, as he presented the new Soviet position at the Vienna talks recently.

Grinevsky called for a U.S.-Soviet manpower ceiling of 70,000 to 80,000 for each nation, about a third of the limit agreed upon in February. He similarly called for significantly lower levels of tanks and other armor. Otherwise, Grinevsky complained, instead of equal numerical levels as the treaty originally envisaged, NATO will have a 2-to-1 advantage in weaponry.

The Soviets apparently chose the new limit, roughly the size of a U.S. Army corps and support elements, because Pentagon authorities have said that it is the minimal effective military force and because influential Congress members have supported roughly that number as a goal for 1995.

The United States and its allies are strongly opposed to renegotiation but are prepared to drop all references to U.S. manpower limits because Washington would gain greater flexibility to choose its own limits, without legally binding ceilings, U.S. officials said. Such an arrangement also would speed up completion of the conventional forces treaty, they added.

The remarkable change in the Soviet position, while broadly attributable to that nation’s dramatically eroded posture, was precipitated by the Soviet-German agreement July 16. In it, Moscow agreed to a unified Germany, to its membership in NATO and to full withdrawal of about 380,000 Soviet troops from East Germany by mid-1994. In return, the Bonn government committed itself to a 370,000-man ceiling for a unified German army, air force and navy.

Until then, West Germany had staunchly refused to set national force limits. The Soviets had attempted to gain manpower limits circuitously, by seeking an overall ceiling of 700,000 to 750,000 troops on all NATO forces in the central zone of Europe--largely made up of Germany--and by limits on U.S. forces.

The Soviets agreed with the United States in Ottawa in February to a ceiling of 195,000 troops each for U.S. and Soviet forces in the central zone, plus another 30,000 for the United States only on the periphery of the Continent, including those in Britain, Italy, Greece and Turkey. U.S. forces currently total about 305,000.

The Bush Administration came under immediate fire for accepting the 30,000 peripheral limit, and the Pentagon in particular was looking for ways to increase this ceiling to help with any crisis movement of men and materiel to the Middle East.

Baker readily agreed to drop the Ottawa ceilings when the move was proposed at an Aug. 5 meeting, a few days after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, by Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze. Washington saw it as a way out of the peripheral limit as well as an opportunity for greater flexibility on troop limits.

But last week, Grinevsky proposed formally that the U.S.-Soviet manpower levels be lowered, not eliminated, along with renegotiating the other categories of ground weapons. The United States refused, and Baker made it public Monday in the clipped shorthand of arms negotiations at a Brussels news conference.

“The understandings that were reached in Ottawa (i.e., 195,000 troops for the United States and Soviet Union in Central Europe, plus 30,000 Americans on the periphery) have been overtaken by events,” he said. “So the question of the overall levels of U.S. forces is one that is very much in the air.”