The World - News from Dec. 18, 1988

Warsaw Pact defense ministers held a one-day meeting in Bulgaria, their first since Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev announced sweeping cuts in troops and tanks earlier this month. The official Bulgarian news agency BTA said the ministers discussed comparative troop and weapons levels in the Warsaw Pact and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The meeting in Sofia was held “in a businesslike atmosphere, in a spirit of friendship and mutual understanding,” the agency said. It was the ministers’ first meeting since Gorbachev’s dramatic Dec. 8 announcement that Soviet forces would be cut by 500,000 in two years.