Gorbachev Still No. 1, Bush Tells Yeltsin : Diplomacy: But the Russian Federation leader’s entourage is clearly pleased with its White House reception.

President Bush warmly welcomed Boris N. Yeltsin to the White House on Thursday but made it clear that, in terms of U.S. policy, the newly elected Russian Federation president is no alternative to Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

“I want to be very clear about this: The United States will continue to maintain the closest possible official relationship with the Soviet government of President Gorbachev,” Bush told Yeltsin in a Rose Garden ceremony at the start of their talks.

Despite this gentle but unmistakable admonition to Gorbachev’s reform-minded rival, the Yeltsin entourage was clearly pleased with the White House reception the Russian leader received at the climax of a four-day U.S. visit. Yeltsin’s allies believe the trip has burnished his world image and given him the opportunity to project himself as Gorbachev’s equal.

Praising Yeltsin’s “commitment to democratic values and free-market principles,” Bush said the United States “looks forward to working with” him.

“To put it in American terms, he won by a landslide,” Bush said, referring to Yeltsin’s victory last week over a field of Communist Party candidates in Russia’s first democratic election.

As president of the Russian Federation, the largest and most important of the Soviet Union’s 15 republics, Yeltsin is the only Soviet leader who can now claim a popular mandate for his policies.

The White House red-carpet welcome for Yeltsin, who spent more than 90 minutes in the Oval Office with Bush, was in stark contrast to the reception he received two years ago when he visited the United States as a member of the Soviet Parliament. Then, the maverick reformer and Gorbachev critic entered the White House quietly through a side entrance and visited with Bush only a few minutes.

This time, his police-escorted motorcade of chauffeur-driven limousines swung through the front gates.

Still, underscoring the delicate dilemma that Yeltsin’s visit posed for the White House, Bush pointedly drew a distinction in his welcoming remarks between Yeltsin as a popularly elected Soviet leader and champion of Western-backed reforms and Yeltsin as a rival and possible heir apparent to Gorbachev.

Indeed, Bush was careful to lavish as much praise on Gorbachev as he did on Yeltsin as he escorted the burly, silver-haired Russian leader into the Rose Garden to speak to reporters before their meeting.

“Let’s not forget that it was President Gorbachev’s courageous policies of glasnost and perestroika that were the pivotal factors enabling us to end the Cold War and make Europe whole and free,” the President said.

The Bush Administration’s message to Yeltsin later was underlined even more clearly by National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, who told reporters that while Yeltsin is the leader of a “major sub-entity” of the Soviet Union, the central government under Gorbachev “is the entity with whom we have diplomatic and other relations, and we will behave according to that reality.”

Scowcroft added that while the United States may respond positively to some of Yeltsin’s requests for economic, technical and management assistance, it would do so only with Gorbachev’s approval. “I want to underscore that this will be done with the acquiescence of the center. This is not a program against the center,” Scowcroft said.

Yeltsin, in comments after the White House meeting, said the Bush Administration had agreed to commence a “commercial dialogue” with him that he hopes will lead to U.S. help for the Russian Federation’s efforts to create a free-market economy.

Scowcroft and other officials indicated, however, that no commitments had yet been made.

If his long-anticipated meeting with Bush contained more symbolism than substance, Yeltsin did not exhibit any disappointment. Indeed, Soviet experts indicated at the start of Yeltsin’s visit that they expected the symbolic value of the meeting to outweigh any of the substance.

“They didn’t come with a negotiating agenda, they didn’t bring a list with them. But just being received by the President of the only superpower left in the world helps to establish Yeltsin’s position and his equality with Gorbachev,” said Abe Becker, a Soviet affairs specialist with the RAND Corp.

Yeltsin is here at the invitation of U.S. congressional leaders.