EXPERTS DON'T THINK SHIFT MAKES WAR MORE LIKELY.(Main)

Byline: Reed Karaim Knight-Ridder

The Soviet Union is estimated to have 11,000 nuclear warheads pointed at the United States, but for six years the trigger has been in the friendly hands of Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Now, control of the Soviet nuclear arsenal has suddenly become an unsettling, open question. But U.S. military experts say the threat from that arsenal has not necessarily increased.

"The last thing that the central government in Moscow would ever lose control of would be their nuclear weapons," said Jay Kosminsky, a Soviet defense analyst with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank.

Defense analysts say …