WASHINGTON — John McCain's nuclear proposals are largely in line with those of the unpopular President Bush, and even where the two disagree, the Republican presidential candidate has waffled.

Like the president, McCain favors extending arms control deals with Russia, opening strategic nuclear talks with China and pressing on multiple fronts to limit the spread of nuclear arms technologies.

The most notable difference is perhaps the Arizona Republican's declaration that he dreams of seeing nuclear weapons eliminated. Yet even on that point McCain equivocated by also stating in his nuclear policy speech Tuesday that "we must continue to deploy a safe and reliable nuclear deterrent."

McCain seemed to signal that stopping the illicit spread of nuclear arms technology would be more of a priority in his White House than it has under Bush, calling it a "crisis" that cannot be ended by military action alone.

McCain split with Bush by advocating the total withdrawal of U.S. and Russian short-range nuclear weapons in Europe, although the only such U.S. weapons there are a small number of aerial bombs. The vast majority of U.S. tactical nuclear arms in Europe were ordered out by the first President Bush.

McCain also proposed reviving a treaty banning the testing of nuclear weapons, which the Senate rejected during the Clinton administration and which the Bush White House did not attempt to resurrect.

McCain said he would "cancel all further work" on development of a new earth-penetrating nuclear weapon that the Bush administration had proposed but abandoned more than two years ago. The senator did not explicitly say whether he would support reviving any element of nuclear arms production.

"I would only support the development of any new type of nuclear weapon that is absolutely essential for the viability of our deterrent, that results in making possible further decreases in the size of our nuclear arsenal and furthers our global nuclear security goals," McCain said.

The broad scope of McCain's vision on nuclear policy appears similar in many ways to that of Bush, whose administration conducted an in-depth review of nuclear issues shortly after it took office. In a report published in January 2002, that review concluded that nuclear weapons "play a critical role in the defense capabilities of the United States" in support of its friends and allies.

In many respects the McCain approach mirrored Bush's: