Yeltsin Savors Triumph of U.S. Visit : Diplomacy: Once scorned as a ‘spoiler,’ he is now hailed by Bush as a promoter of democracy. He comes away with two major achievements.

For President Boris N. Yeltsin, the declaration Saturday proclaiming Russian-American friendship was a moment of sweet triumph, personal as well as political, for he had gotten just about everything he wanted from his first summit meeting with President Bush.

Once scorned here as a “spoiler” threatening former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Yeltsin was hailed by Bush as a courageous promoter of democracy and warmly welcomed to the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md.

From Bush he also had a promise of much-needed support for his economic reforms, a commitment to discuss his far-reaching proposals for nuclear disarmament and a plan for two further Russian-American summit meetings this year.

“Boffo!” a senior Russian official said after the Camp David meeting. “Absolutely great! For us, it is a new era, a whole new relationship.

“We have ended Soviet-American relations, which were always destined to be adversarial, and resumed Russian-American relations, which historically were warm.”

For Yeltsin, there had been two major achievements at Camp David--a new basis was established for relations between Moscow and Washington, and he won acceptance as the leader of Russia, replacing Gorbachev in the American mind.

“We met all our objectives,” a Russian official said.

“This was not a meeting where we expected to agree on big arms cuts, but to discuss the need for them. We were not expecting billions of dollars in aid, but to get across our need for that assistance.”

A broad smile spread across Yeltsin’s face as Bush, once a critic, praised him at the conclusion of their talks.

“He laid his life on the line,” Bush said, citing Yeltsin’s defiance of last August’s coup attempt by hard-liners. “. . . He is applying that same courage now to this concept of economic reform, and one certainly cannot doubt his full commitment to this subject.”

With Russians questioning the wisdom of his economic reforms as well as his ability to stay such a difficult course, Yeltsin will profit from Bush’s endorsement, particularly as Russians recall how hesitant Bush was to receive him earlier.

And Yeltsin clearly relished recounting the warmth of their new relations for what will be a prime-time audience back home tonight, when the press conference is broadcast there.

In describing Bush as a man with “incredible qualities as a politician” and a “really great political figure,” Yeltsin was telling his compatriots of his acceptance as an equal in that league.

From the outset of his trip to the United Nations, Washington and London, Yeltsin had sought to demonstrate the break between Soviet and Russian foreign policy, senior Russian officials said, and he tried in his talks with Bush to elaborate his vision of their countries as “friends and allies.”

“We believe there should be a new agenda in Russian-American relations and not simply the extension and perhaps some adaptation of the old Soviet-American agenda,” a Russian Foreign Ministry official said earlier last week. “That’s what Camp David is about.

“This agenda should include disarmament--not the old, step-by-step negotiations, but truly big cuts reflecting a new philosophy and based on new concepts.

“It should include economic cooperation on an unprecedented scale, for the future of Russia, our young democracy and the fate of our neighbors is at stake. And it should reflect in real terms the end of our confrontation.”

The Camp David declaration did not go as far as Yeltsin had wanted, officials said, but it did put relations between Washington and Moscow on a new footing.

“We did not want just another statement declaring the end of the Cold War,” a Yeltsin aide said. “We wanted a commitment to common principles, to shared goals, to become trusting allies of one another.

“With this, the United States is recognizing that we are not a ‘reformed Soviet Union,’ which was the way we were, and the way we were viewed, under Gorbachev. We are being recognized as a new state, founded on democracy and freedom, and accepted on that basis by the United States, which is also founded on democracy and freedom.”