U.S. Dilemma: Wooing 2 Top Soviet Leaders

President Bush, after two years of putting his diplomatic faith in Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, is attempting a delicate, perhaps impossible shift: pledging his heart simultaneously to both Gorbachev and Boris N. Yeltsin, the increasingly powerful president of the Russian Federation.

But already, only two days into the President’s attempt to woo two Soviet leaders at the same time, American critics on both the left and right are charging that he is making a mistake by clinging to Gorbachev, who appears increasingly discredited in the Soviet Union.

“We don’t think we have to choose between Gorbachev and Yeltsin,” countered one senior Administration official. “We want to have good relations with both.”

To symbolize that approach, officials said, the new U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Robert S. Strauss, plans to meet in Moscow today first with Gorbachev, then--immediately, but separately--with Yeltsin.

Bush aides said that despite Gorbachev’s apparent loss of power, they still intend to deal with the Soviet president as their chief diplomatic partner, in part because of his record of cooperating successfully with the United States on issues from arms control to the Persian Gulf War.

“There’s a feeling that we ought to dance with the one that brung us,” one official explained. “How we combine that with working more closely with Yeltsin isn’t clear yet.”

Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger said of Gorbachev: “Whatever else we may think about the man, he is responsible for massive change in the Soviet Union. What we saw with thousands of people in the streets in Moscow and Leningrad in the last three days probably could not have happened without the kinds of changes he’s introduced into the Soviet Union.”

But a variety of critics, mostly conservatives but also some liberals, are questioning the Administration’s approach. Some charge that Bush has made the mistake of “personalizing” his foreign policy, standing by Gorbachev long after the Soviet people have moved on. Others say the policy simply cannot work over the long run, because Gorbachev and Yeltsin, although they appear to be allies now, will inevitably clash.

“Gorbachev isn’t a choice any more,” said Allen Weinstein, director of the private Center for Democracy, who has been working with Yeltsin aides. “It doesn’t make sense to stick with him. . . . As soon as he gets in the way of the process of Russian democracy, he’s history.”

“The Administration is in a real dilemma here,” said Morton Abramowitz, a former U.S. ambassador who is now president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “At some point, they are going to be forced to choose. Which way are they going to go?”

The problem of dealing with Boris Yeltsin has a long history in the inner councils of the Bush Administration. Last year, former officials said, Deputy National Security Adviser Robert M. Gates proposed that the Administration should seek closer contact with Yeltsin as a possible successor or alternative to Gorbachev--but his advice was initially resisted by Bush, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

Bush, Scowcroft and Baker reportedly felt that moving toward Yeltsin, who was becoming Gorbachev’s main rival for power, might needlessly offend the Soviet president at a time when the United States was trying to conclude a nuclear weapons reduction treaty and maintain Moscow’s support for the war against Iraq. So, in January, when Yeltsin asked for a meeting with Bush in the White House, his request was rebuffed, a move that associates said seriously offended the proud Siberian.

In March, the Administration reconsidered the issue and decided to reach out to the leaders of all the Soviet Union’s 15 republics, not just Yeltsin. The Russian leader was granted the White House meeting he had sought, and last month, when Bush visited Moscow for a summit meeting, he made a point of dropping by Yeltsin’s Kremlin office, a symbolic act of respect.

Nevertheless, Yeltsin and his aides remained convinced that Bush was not paying him the attention he deserved as the most powerful politician in the newly evolving Soviet system, according to several U.S. scholars who have worked with the Russian leader.

“There is a lot of bitterness in the Russian government. . . . These people feel that the Administration became far too cozy with Gorbachev,” said Dmitri Simes of the Carnegie Endowment. “The President was calling Gorbachev publicly ‘Mikhail,’ he was referring to his wife as ‘Raisa’. . . . There is clearly a problem with perceptions of American policy and this American administration in Moscow today.”

Indeed, Bush and Baker have frequently made a point of their close relationships with Gorbachev and his aides. The President has often noted his ability to pick up the telephone and call the Soviet president. And back then, Baker and his now ousted Soviet counterpart, Alexander A. Bessmertnykh, made a public show of calling each other “Jim” and “Sasha,” trying to cement the same kind of close relationship Baker had enjoyed with the previous foreign minister, Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

But while those moves reflected Bush’s personal approach to diplomacy and played well to an American public that savored signs of real friendship with the leaders of the Soviet Union, they also worried an unusual coalition of Soviet radicals and mostly conservative Americans who were rapidly becoming less enamored of Gorbachev.

“Gorbachev has been our man too long already,” said Burton Yale Pines, vice president of the conservative Heritage Foundation. “This isn’t a time for a middle ground; this is a time to come out for democracy--which means tilting toward Yeltsin.”

Ironically, Bush’s personal touch served him well during the abortive coup, when--with Gorbachev under house arrest and incommunicado--he repeatedly talked by telephone with Yeltsin at the Russian leader’s besieged headquarters in Moscow.

In those calls, which Yeltsin initiated Monday, the first day of the coup attempt, the Russian leader asked Bush to condemn the putsch, and Bush, after hesitating for most of a day, agreed.

Yeltsin and his aides “most definitely are very grateful for the President’s talking to Yeltsin during the situation,” said Simes. “They are less than grateful to the President for taking Gorbachev’s side so much on this whole matter of whether Gorbachev knew what was coming.”

“We think we’re doing all right,” a senior Administration official responded. “We know Yeltsin felt slighted during the summit, but he feels better now. Those telephone calls (during the coup attempt) were very important.”

Besides, the official added, “He isn’t president of the Soviet Union--yet. . . . We’re just going to hang tough. Our plan is to lie low and say as little as possible in public until they sort things out in Moscow.”

That approach may work, said Peter Rodman, a former NSC aide--at least while Gorbachev and Yeltsin are still cooperating.

“As long as Yeltsin and Gorbachev represent the same kind of trend . . . then the President is correct that we don’t have to choose between these people right now,” he said.

“The Soviets have some of the responsibility to sort out a division of labor, how they’re going to conduct foreign policy,” he added. “ . . . I don’t think the burden is on us right now. I think we can wait until they sort it out. As long as no foreign policy problems are being presented, we don’t have to make any decisions.

“As the dust settles, we will know where the power is,” he said. “There will be a Soviet foreign minister, whoever he is, and there will be a Russian foreign minister.