Central Europe

Keene, New Hampshire. -- It's reasonable, when gauging how far liberty has advanced in newly unshackled countries, to look for the freedoms we put first in our Bill of Rights -- the freedoms of speech and press.Of course, the existence of any freedom has never guaranteed the ability to exercise it, a fact quite clear in some Third World countries where political control of legally independent newspapers is the rule.But in some other parts of the world a force considerably more complex than politics constrains a free press.

Europe lost much of its virgin forest early, from sheer development. Britain's New Forest was an early effort at conservation, promulgated by William the Conqueror in 1079. The legends of Robin Hood reflect resistance by common people to the class implications of forest preservation laws. Part of the ferment of the American Revolution was resistance in New England to the king's monopoly on tree trunks suitable for ship masts. The need for such tree trunks helped stiffen London against American independence, and fueled the exploration that led to much of the conquests by the British Empire.

Berkeley, California. -- After seven months of debate over exactly what it means, the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe -- signed last November by the United States, the Soviet Union and 20 other nations -- was finally submitted to the Senate for ratification Monday.The treaty is, without doubt, the most sweeping arms-control agreement in history. It will reduce to equal levels military equipment held by NATO and the former Warsaw Pact nations in five categories: tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery, aircraft and helicopters.

BERLIN -- Faced with a potential war on their doorstep, Western European leaders implemented newly developed crisis management mechanisms yesterday to try to force Yugoslavia and its two breakaway republics into peace negotiations.At the same time, German officials said they had set up a team to organize the evacuation of 10,000 tourists from Yugoslavia and to cope with the possible influx of 20,000 refugees from the fighting.The 12 European Community leaders meeting in Luxembourg agreed to freeze $1 billion in economic credits and yesterday sent three of their foreign ministers to Yugoslavia with a five-point peace plan to stop the fighting and suspend the declarations of independence made by Croatia and Slovenia.

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The North Atlantic Treaty Organization reached agreement yesterday on the outline of a radical reorganization that would mean deep cuts in its overall troop level in Europe and the creation of a rapid-reaction corps for sudden hot spots.The number of active U.S. troops now in Europe is estimated at 320,000, and officials agreed that the reorganization, driven by the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, could cut that figure in half.The reductions in the 16-nation alliance would begin at the end of 1994 and are to be completed by the end of the decade.

IN THE Soviet Union, new waves of protest are pushing President Mikhail Gorbachev deeper and deeper into a corner. . . .Gorbachev, still shackled to much of his communist past, has proved unable to make the one critical break needed to put his troubled country on a truly new course: He has not dared to let real democracy have a chance.It would appear that Gorbachev has been seized by a paralysis of will and imagination, which has left him within an ace of forfeiting much of the remarkable liberalization he has brought his country.

WASHINGTON -- For nearly two years, two achievement-oriented men have worked as partners in shaping a new relationship among nations after the Cold War, uniting their countries against aggression, locking in arms reductions and solving the regional conflicts through which, in a more hostile era, the two superpowers kept each other in check.That partnership, between James A. Baker III and Eduard A. Shevardnadze, came apart yesterday with the announced resignation of the Soviet foreign minister.

Soviet capacity to launch a quick, massive attack with non-nuclear forces in Central Europe will disappear in a mountain of scrapped military equipment under the most comprehensive disarmament treaty ever negotiated.More than 19,000 Soviet tanks, 30,000 heavy artillery pieces and 10,000 armored personnel carriers are likely to be dismantled. What's left of the once-mighty Warsaw Pact military machine, which in the end succeeded only in weakening Soviet bloc economies, will be subjected to international monitoring to foreclose future aggression.