1 George P. Shultz plans to cancel his last official trip overseas - to a human rights conference in Vienna - unless Greece gives ground in a dispute over how much of Turkey should be covered by an East-West arms control agreement.
2 A decision by the Secretary of State to stay home also means he would miss a 32nd and final meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.
3 At the root of this uncertainty is an effort by the Greek government to expose more Turkish territory to conventional arms control coverage.
4 Boundaries have been drawn for conventional arms control negotiations designed to follow the close of the rights conference, but Greece, suspicious of Turkey and fretful about Cyprus, is holding out.
5 Everyone else in the 16-nation NATO alliance has agreed on the precise expanse of Europe to be covered in the Conventional Stability Talks with the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact to reduce troops, tanks and artillery across the European landscape.
6 But unless a compromise is struck with Athens and its mercurial prime minister, Andreas Papandreou, the Vienna conference - which makes its decisions by consensus - cannot close and negotiations between NATO and the Warsaw Pact will be put off indefinitely.
7 The rights conference, which opened in November 1986, has reviewed compliance with the Helsinki agreement.
8 The 35-nation accord signed in the Finnish capital in 1975 provided for human rights improvements and a lessening of tensions between East and West.
9 The arms control talks are covered by the conference because they aim at reducing those tensions.
10 The end of the Vienna conference would set the stage for the opening within weeks of the arms control talks between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
11 The United States and Moscow had agreed in 1983 that the area to be covered by reductions would stretch from the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains in the Soviet Union.
12 But it took years of negotiations to define the area more exactly.
13 NATO wanted to include the Caucasus mountain region in the Soviet Union.
14 The Warsaw Pact wanted the U.S. air base at Incirlik, Turkey, covered, as well.
15 Turkey, meanwhile, stretches from Europe, the focus of the negotiations, to Asia, which is not part of the mandate.
16 The Turks are nervous about three of their neighbors, Iran, Syria and Iraq, and have tensions with Greece over Cyprus to the south.
17 They would like to keep as many men under arms as they can.
18 The Turkish army invaded Cyprus in 1974 and still holds about one-third of the island where Turkey set up a separate state that only Ankara recognizes as legitimate.
19 The Greek Cypriots, who are in the majority on the island and have Greece's support, want the Turks to withdraw.
20 In Vienna, a deal was struck between Turkey and the Soviet Union.
21 It excluded a large area along Turkey's southern coast from the negotiations - thereby guaranteeing that Turkish forces in the area would not be part of any reduction NATO and the Warsaw Pact work out.
22 NATO went along with the deal, but Greece did not.
23 Papandreou's government wanted more of Turkish territory and southern ports included in the arms control negotiations.
24 Greece's goal is to reduce Turkish forces facing Cyprus.
25 The United States is not directly involved in the dispute.
26 'We've always felt the working out should be done by the Soviets and the Turks,' said a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
27 But he stressed that the Greeks, who initially accepted the exclusion of an even larger area of Turkey from the negotiations, were at odds with all of NATO.
28 'Everybody was taken aback when they changed their position,' the official said.
29 There is still some time to reach a settlement before Shultz's scheduled departure for Vienna on Sunday.
30 But the time is running short.

Everyone else in the 16 - nation NATO alliance has agreed on the precise expanse of Europe to be covered in the Conventional Stability Talks with the Soviet - led Warsaw Pact to reduce troops , tanks and artillery across the European landscape .
NATO alliance
Who are the 16 nations in the NATO alliance?