Kissinger, CIA Chief Deliver Warnings : Foreign policy: Attention to Eastern Europe, other trouble spots urged by speakers at conference sponsored by Nixon library.

A former secretary of state and the current director of the Central Intelligence Agency sounded separate warnings about global instability Thursday on the final day of a foreign policy conference sponsored by Yorba Linda’s Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace.

Henry A. Kissinger, who served as Nixon’s secretary of state, told an audience of 200 diplomats, government officials and scholars that the United States, in the push to aid the Russian Federation, cannot neglect the nations of Eastern Europe and other former Soviet republics. A perpetually weak Eastern Europe, Kissinger said, could one day invite new aggression from an expansion-minded Russia--or Germany.

CIA Director Robert M. Gates, meanwhile, said the world remains an essentially dangerous place, not only because of instability in the former Soviet Republics, but because of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the Third World.

The two-day gathering at the swank Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown attracted the international news media and a host of current and former government officials, including President Bush, three former CIA directors and a brigade of Nixon loyalists.

Among them were former United Nations Ambassador Vernon A. Walters, former economic adviser Herbert Stein, erstwhile Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans, and former presidential press secretary Ron Ziegler. Also in attendance was Nixon’s former secretary, Rose Mary Woods.

“We feel it has been a successful conference, owing to the fact that it has had such a stellar and diverse audience,” said John H. Taylor, the library’s director.

“Our dictum is always to try to mimic the former President by doing programming that has an impact on the course of events,” Taylor said. “This is the first time in its young life that the Nixon library has been able to do that.”

The 79-year-old Nixon, who has not made a major policy address in Washington in several years, spoke without notes for more than 30 minutes Wednesday, and remained throughout the panel discussions to introduce guests and share anecdotes.

The only reference to the overarching event of the Nixon presidency--the Watergate scandal--came during Nixon’s introduction by the conference chairman, James R. Schlesinger, Nixon’s former secretary of defense.

Praising Nixon’s acumen as a student and practitioner of diplomacy, Schlesinger said, “Our speaker is a man who has weathered a storm that would have been fatal to most other men.”

Nixon resigned the presidency in August, 1974, after the House Judiciary Committee voted to proceed with articles of impeachment stemming from a June, 1972, burglary at the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex in Washington.

Ziegler, who was largely reviled by the White House press corps during the latter days of the Watergate scandal, said he thought the conference was a success because its scope was broad and its tenor nonpartisan.

“I think it shows a certain permanence and significance to the Richard Nixon library . . . that may not have been assumed prior to this,” Ziegler said. “I don’t think that’s the objective of this (conference), but I think it could ultimately be the outcome.”

Kissinger’s remarks came a day after Nixon urged the Bush Administration to lead the Western democracies in providing a massive aid program, perhaps up to $20 billion a year, for Russia and the other former Soviet republics to avert the possibility of the collapse of democracy and the rise of “a new despotism.”

Kissinger said he endorsed Nixon’s proposal, but told his audience he wanted to add some diplomatic “nuance” to the suggestion. Nixon, who has attended both days of the conference, applauded his former cabinet member’s comments.

The former secretary of state reminded his audience that, “since Peter the Great, Russian troops have invaded their neighbors 17 times. . . .”

“It cannot be in our interest to see a no-man’s land develop between a powerful Germany and a recovering Russia, tempting hegemonic aspirations of either or both, or conflicts,” said Kissinger, who also served as Nixon’s national security adviser.

“This is why the area in between . . . must receive the attention commensurate to that given to Russia. . . .

“As a great nation, we have no conflicting national interests with (Russia) that I can discover,” Kissinger said, “unless it starts again on its historic (course) of re-acquiring all the republics that have now become independent.”

What the United States should work to prevent, Kissinger said, “in the interests of the Russian people, as well as in the interests of world peace, is a re-centralization. This is why I believe that the (aid) program . . . should be focused on all of Eastern Europe.”

Gates told the conference that “the danger of war in Europe or a nuclear holocaust has diminished nearly to the vanishing point,” but that the world remains dangerous.

Gates cited potential instability in the Russian Federation and other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, as the former Soviet Union is known.

“If . . . autocratic, xenophobic, aggressive regimes emerge from the current privation and turmoil,” Gates said, “they might well rebuild their forces and come to constitute a renewed threat.”

The CIA director said that aside from the uncertainties associated with the breakup of the former Soviet Union, “the greatest danger to international peace and order is the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by nearly two dozen nations.”

Recapping analyses previously made public, Gates said that Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Libya, Algeria, India and Pakistan remain serious threats to world peace.

Gates said the Persian Gulf War “significantly damaged Iraq’s special weapons production programs . . . but we believe Baghdad has been able to preserve significant elements of each,” including nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and ballistic missiles.

In addition, Gates said, North Korea is making and selling copies of the Soviet Scud missile, which Iraq used against Israel and Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. Customers so far include Iran and Syria, the CIA chief said.

Gates refused to comment on a report in the Thursday edition of The Washington Times that Israel had sold China Patriot missiles left over from the Gulf War.