Top Lawmakers Confer With Yeltsin and Urge U.S. to Rush Food Aid : Russia: Speaker Foley sees ‘a great deal of confidence’ in the visitor’s handling of reform efforts in his homeland.

Top congressional leaders met with Russian President Bori s N. Yeltsin on Saturday and emerged expressing confidence in his leadership and declaring that the United States should rush more food aid to the Commonwealth republics.

After an hourlong talk with the visiting leader at the Russian Embassy, House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) said there now is “a great deal of confidence” in Yeltsin’s handling of reform efforts in Russia. “Without making specific promises, I think we all agree we should be forthcoming” in approving aid, he said.

Three other lawmakers who accompanied Foley, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), also offered favorable assessments.

“All of us found him to be persuasive,” Mitchell told reporters later.

Making a good impression was important for Yeltsin because Congress will act this session on a Bush Administration request for $350 million in aid for Russia.

While it is almost certain to pass, subsequent aid requests for short- and long-term aid may follow as all 11 republics of the Commonwealth of Independent States struggle to convert their economies from the old state-dominated system to that of the free market.

Any large-scale foreign aid measures will encounter a tough reception at least as long as the American domestic economy continues to stagger. In Russia’s case, questions about Yeltsin’s ability to manage the complex reform program have heightened some lawmakers’ skepticism.

Mitchell said Yeltsin warned the lawmakers that the next three months could be critical to the survival of democracy in Russia and that food aid is needed if the country is to be able to maintain the social stability needed to give its new economic reforms time to work.

“It’s an appropriate time for us to do so, given what’s at stake,” the majority leader said in an impromptu news conference.

Dole agreed. “The next three months are critical to his political future,” he said. “If we’re going to respond, we need to do so quickly.”

But the lawmakers stopped short of proposing massive U.S. aid beyond short-term food assistance, saying the United States should channel the bulk of its aid through the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other such multilateral channels.

“This is not a situation which could be resolved by unilateral American action, nor should it be,” Mitchell told reporters. Added Gephardt: “I think the West together has to perform this, and we (the United States) need to be part of it.” The lawmakers each called for other countries to do more to provide longer-term aid to the former Soviet republics.

The four leaders said Yeltsin covered a broad range of issues, from the new U.S.-Russian friendship declaration reached at Camp David earlier in the day to Yeltsin’s views on arms control, nuclear proliferation, weapons storage and the “brain drain” of Russian scientists.

“We listened, heard him out,” Gephardt said. “He was confident, he was in command of the problems before him.”