Nuclear Weapons Europe

President Bush proposed a new treaty Thursday that could reduce or eliminate ground-based, short-range nuclear weapons in Europe, a step the Administration hopes will allow the Soviet Union to live more easily with a united Germany's presence in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Bush acknowledged that he does "worry about the military resurgence of some kind inside the Soviet Union."

NATO said Thursday that the United States has finished removing thousands of tactical nuclear weapons that it had stationed in Europe during the Cold War. The announcement closed a chapter in the Cold War that began with a nuclear buildup in the early 1950s prompted by heightened East-West tensions.

Britain and France, responding to President Bush's plan not to modernize short-range nuclear weapons in Europe, announced that they will forge closer links of their own in security and defense matters. This may include cooperation on their own nuclear weapons programs, aides said at a summit meeting in England of Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and France's President Francois Mitterrand. Thatcher noted that the two are "independent nuclear deterrent powers--the only two in Europe."

Moving to shore up Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and his shaky democracy, France on Friday concluded a landmark treaty with Russia resurrecting a historic alliance. But the French refused, for now, to commit themselves to Yeltsin's nuclear disarmament plan.

U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney is slated to brief his North Atlantic Treaty Organization colleagues on President Bush's recent nuclear disarmament initiative and the response by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev at a meeting in the Sicilian resort Thursday and Friday. The NATO defense ministers also plan to discuss the future of the remaining nuclear weapons in Europe, specifically those based in Britain and Germany.

The Soviet Union has proposed that the NATO nations enter into negotiations this fall on the elimination of all tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, alliance officials said Friday. But NATO diplomats insisted that such bargaining should be put off until an accord is reached in Vienna on reducing troops, tanks and other conventional arms in Europe.

Officials of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization confirmed Friday that NATO would reduce nuclear weapons in Europe to a "minimum"--but also declared that atomic arms would still be kept on the Continent for the "foreseeable future." "We can't dis-invent nuclear weapons," NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner said after a two-day meeting of defense ministers--acting as the nuclear planning group--at this Mediterranean resort.

On the eve of a summit meeting of Western leaders next week, the Bush Administration has proposed to its allies the eventual withdrawal of the U.S. arsenal of nuclear-tipped artillery shells from Western Europe, senior U.S. and diplomatic officials disclosed Saturday. The unilateral withdrawal of a stockpile of nearly 1,400 U.S. nuclear weapons from West Germany and four other countries would occur as virtually all the enemy targets for such weapons disappear from Eastern Europe.

The Soviet Union's proposal to eliminate intermediate- and short-range nuclear weapons from Europe would require the United States to reverse a policy that has been the linchpin of European security for 35 years, former National Security Adviser Brent L. Scowcroft said Friday. Scowcroft, describing himself as a traditionalist, expressed grave reservations about the proposals discussed earlier in the week by Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

In the wake of an agreement limiting non-nuclear forces in Europe, an attacking army of Soviet troops would have so far to march and would arrive so thinned-out that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization can safely dispense with most of its short-range nuclear weapons, senior NATO defense officials have concluded.

Officials of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization confirmed Friday that NATO would reduce nuclear weapons in Europe to a "minimum"--but also declared that atomic arms would still be kept on the Continent for the "foreseeable future." "We can't dis-invent nuclear weapons," NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner said after a two-day meeting of defense ministers--acting as the nuclear planning group--at this Mediterranean resort.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization agreed here Thursday on a dramatic reduction in its nuclear armory in Europe. NATO defense ministers decided to eliminate fully 80% of the alliance's 3,500 nuclear weapons--leaving only 700 air-delivered atomic bombs at European air bases. The ministers also approved the outlines of the sweeping new strategy for NATO in the aftermath of the Cold War, based on smaller, more mobile forces able to respond to contingencies inside and outside Europe.

U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney is slated to brief his North Atlantic Treaty Organization colleagues on President Bush's recent nuclear disarmament initiative and the response by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev at a meeting in the Sicilian resort Thursday and Friday. The NATO defense ministers also plan to discuss the future of the remaining nuclear weapons in Europe, specifically those based in Britain and Germany.

The United States is expected to take yet another step toward cutting its nuclear arsenal later this month when, after consultations with its allies, the stockpile of U.S. tactical atomic bombs in Europe will be roughly halved, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

After an initial wave of euphoria over President Bush's announcement of unilateral nuclear arms reductions, some European leaders contended Saturday that the President did not go far enough. French President Francois Mitterrand, commander in chief of Western Europe's only independent nuclear force, said France will not reduce its nuclear weapons arsenal until the United States and Soviet Union cut deeper into theirs.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has decided that all of its tactical nuclear weapons will be removed from Europe. Formal ratification of the decision may be announced as early as November, when the 16 NATO defense ministers are scheduled to meet in Rome, Secretary General Manfred Woerner said Thursday in Bonn. NATO officials in Brussels disclosed that eliminating the so-called battlefield nuclear arms will be part of its revised doctrine.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney warned Tuesday that in spite of political changes that have caused the "demise" of the Warsaw Pact as a military threat, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should not renounce the first use of nuclear weapons in a European ground war. Speaking to reporters on the way to a meeting of NATO's Nuclear Planning Group here, Cheney said, "I would not give . . . up" the threat to initiate a nuclear war in Europe.

The Bush Administration, faced with growing anti-nuclear sentiment in Europe, is readying a proposal to open negotiations with the Soviet Union to eliminate all short-range, ground-launched nuclear weapons from Europe, Administration officials said Tuesday. The proposal to launch negotiations "on an accelerated schedule" would cover the Lance missile and two classes of U.S. nuclear artillery, as well as the equivalent Soviet weapons, the officials said.

The sense of occasion surrounding the London NATO summit that ended here Friday left few in any doubt that the changes agreed to by the alliance's 16 member countries represent a watershed development. But the London summit is likely to shape Europe's future in ways that were hardly mentioned in the afterglow of Friday's agreement.

With their 41-year-old alliance on the verge of being overtaken by history, leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization unveiled on Friday a dramatic new blueprint for the future that President Bush said charts a "new course" for a long-divided Europe and "extends the hand of friendship" to old adversaries. "NATO has set a new path for peace," Bush declared as a two-day summit of alliance leaders ended. " . . .