The Associated Press

WASHINGTON € President Clinton will seek a sharp cut in military spending for next year, continuing a decade-long trend, defense sources said yesterday.

Clinton's defense budget request for 1997, to be unveiled next week, will be $243.4 billion, the sources told The Associated Press. Adjusted for inflation, that marks a $14.7 billion decrease from this year's budget.

Even if inflation is not considered, the defense budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 would be $11.4 billion less than the current year's $254.8 billion.

Sources speaking on condition of anonymity cautioned that the overall defense budget plan is subject to final review at the White House prior to its formal unveiling. But they said any last-minute changes would be slight.

Pentagon officials, also speaking only on condition of anonymity, said the budget proposal would contain few major new initiatives but would continue the administration's basic defense policy.

That policy emphasizes improving the quality of life for service members, providing cost-of-living pay raises, maintaining military combat readiness and keeping the overseas force steady at 100,000 in Europe and 100,000 in the Pacific.

At the urging of top uniformed commanders, Clinton plans eventually to shift some funds into weapons procurement, a spending category that this year reached its lowest level since the Korean War. But sources familiar with the proposal for next year said the procurement increase apparently is being put off until defense budgets are compiled for 1998 and beyond.

Clinton plans to seek $38.9 billion for weapons procurement next year, a $5 billion decrease from the figure Congress approved this year. Earlier Clinton budget blueprints had projected a weapons budget for 1997 of $44 billion. The administration apparently is taking advantage of improved inflation estimates to buy about the same amount of weaponry for less money.

Word of continued low weapons spending comes only a day after the leaving vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. William Owens, told lawmakers the Pentagon's procurement budget has slipped to dangerously low levels.

Spending on weapons would not return to this year's level until 1998, when Clinton plans to seek $45.5 billion. From there, weapons spending will increase steadily, rising to $60 billion by 2001.

The Clinton plan would decrease military research totals steadily through the end of the century, the sources said, from a proposed $34.7 billion next year to $31.7 billion in 2001. This may reflect a shift in dollars as major developmental programs like the Air Force F-22 fighter move from the research phase to construction.

The $243.4 billion figure does not include Department of Energy accounts for nuclear weapons and relatively small ancillary defense spending by other agencies such as the FBI and the ready Reserve.

Clinton's request sticks close to what the president projected last year that he would spend in fiscal 1997.

But compared to this year's Pentagon budget, Clinton's request continues a decade-long series of decreases that began in the latter half of the Reagan administration and continued through the Bush and Clinton governments. Under the Clinton plan, defense spending would level off in 1998 and 1999 and increase in 2000 and 2001.

The Clinton request represents a 5.6 percent decrease from this year's Pentagon budget, measured in inflation-adjusted dollars.