Political Stakes Are High for Yeltsin and Bush

When Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin visits President Bush here Tuesday and Wednesday for the first full-scale U.S.-Russia summit since the Soviet Union’s collapse, it will be not only a diplomatic landmark but a distinctly political exercise, as well.

The leaders of the two old superpowers, both facing tumbling popularity ratings, will be doing their best to make each other look good--in the eyes of each one’s voters.

“Neither one will be dealing from a position of strength,” said Georgy A. Arbatov, director of the Institute of the U.S.A. and Canada in Moscow.

Bush advisers hope that the summit will remind American voters of the President’s long experience in foreign affairs, an attribute that has become a major selling point of his reelection campaign. Aides say a campaign camera crew plans to record the summit’s photogenic moments for use in television commercials this fall.

“The President benefits from people perceiving his leadership in this meeting, the fact that he is an experienced international leader,” said White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater.

At the same time, the idea “is to have a meeting with Yeltsin of such stature that it strengthens his hand in world politics, too,” Fitzwater said.

“Yeltsin is really looking for results at this summit, both in the economic and political-military fields,” another official said. “In light of the situation in Russia, it’s important that he not come back empty-handed.”

Boris D. Pyadyshev, editor-in-chief of the Russian journal International Life, noted that Yeltsin “is losing popularity. . . . He needs an official state visit to the United States so he can underline his character as an authentic Russian leader.”

Both Bush and Yeltsin will seek to remind their respective voters how much better the U.S.-Russian relationship is than just a few years ago and how that should make them all breathe easier.

“Hey, do your kids go to bed at night with more worry or less worry about nuclear war?” Bush asked at a news conference two weeks ago, driving home a central message in his reelection campaign. “I think that’s a significant change.”

Diplomatically, the summit will be another landmark in the Bush Administration’s efforts to seal a reliable, friendly relationship with Yeltsin, a leader some senior Bush aides once dismissed as erratic but now consider indispensable.

This will be Yeltsin’s first full-scale “state visit” to Washington. That means he will get full ceremonial honors and a formal dinner at the White House--honors his aides take quite seriously as symbols of their chief’s international credibility.

Making the point that he comes as the leader of a “normal” country, rather than the heir of past Kremlin chieftains, Yeltsin will stay at Blair House instead of the Russian Embassy and reportedly will leave his black Zil limousine in Moscow. Security-obsessed Soviet leaders used to refuse invitations to sleep in the President’s official guest house and always brought their own KGB-chauffeured cars; when Stalin’s foreign minister, Vyacheslav M. Molotov, came to Washington in the 1950s, he slept with a revolver under his pillow.

In the formal high point of the three-day visit, the two presidents are expected to sign a “charter” of U.S.-Russian relations--a broadly worded document that pledges them to build a relationship of “cooperation and partnership.”

But the charter’s impact may be reduced by several factors. First, the United States and Russia have said most of it before, most recently when Yeltsin visited Bush for a day at Camp David in February.

Second, the United States and Russia no longer hold the fate of the world in their hands, as they did during the Cold War. The Kremlin leader has been reduced to the world’s greatest aid-seeker.

That is one of the reasons the White House has decided not to call this meeting a “summit”--not only are the two countries no longer adversaries, but Russia no longer qualifies as a superpower, a senior official said bluntly.

Third, the state visit has the potential to produce conflict instead of harmony; Bush and Yeltsin have disagreed over the shape of their next round of cuts in long-range nuclear weapons.

Both have agreed to cut their atomic warheads by roughly half from the limits negotiated in last year’s Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), from about 9,000 to about 4,700.

But the Bush Administration wants Russia to eliminate its most dangerous nuclear weapons, its land-based missiles with multiple warheads, and Yeltsin has refused.

In an echo from the bad old days of nuclear haggling, the Russian president publicly denounced the U.S. proposal as one-sided, before an audience of military officers, no less.

But he added that the issue should be negotiated during the summit--setting up a potential showdown in the Oval Office.

And on Friday, Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev indicated that the differences have narrowed and may be resolved successfully when the presidents get together.

The major issues at the meeting:

* ARMS CONTROL. “We’ve reached the stage in disarmament where no more home runs can be hit,” said Robert S. Strauss, the U.S. ambassador in Moscow. Still, both countries want an agreement their leaders can sign in Washington to continue the momentum of recent nuclear arms cuts.

The United States wants Russia to destroy all 610 land-based multiple-warhead missiles in the former Soviet arsenal, because U.S. strategists consider them “destabilizing.”

But the Russians point out that their nuclear force relies far more heavily on that kind of missile than does the U.S. force. As a result, they argue, eliminating the missiles would leave Russia significantly weaker than the United States--a prospect Russian military officers reject, no matter how friendly the United States may look.

Prospects are brighter for an agreement on a joint early-warning system against missile attacks from other countries. Under the pact, which has already been quietly negotiated, Russia and the United States will promise to notify each other if they detect a threatening missile launch from a third country.

* ECONOMIC AID. “The stickiest issue between us now has to do with economics,” said Sergei M. Plekhanov, deputy director of the U.S.A.-Canada Institute. “If Yeltsin is able to convince the Administration that he is not restoring communism and is working hard to build the market, then there should be an appropriate response from the American side.”

Yeltsin is expected to reassure Bush that recent delays in carrying out his economic reform programs have only been temporary, politically tactical moves--and Bush is expected to accept that explanation, officials said.

The real test will be Bush’s willingness to pressure the International Monetary Fund to move ahead with a $24-billion aid package despite Yeltsin’s slippage from the letter of IMF requirements.

At the same time, Bush is hoping that Yeltsin will use his Siberian political prowess to do some lobbying on Capitol Hill and inject some new momentum into the Administration’s flagging drive to win passage of its bill authorizing U.S. participation in the multinational aid effort.

The Russian president, who has been known to stampede his own Parliament by the force of a single, blunt speech, is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday.

“One of our objectives is . . . to get Yeltsin to make his case to the American people and Congress,” Fitzwater said.

In this election year, that won’t be easy, even for Yeltsin. “The specter of being seen voting for foreign aid post-L.A. has people frightened,” admitted a senior official who has been lobbying for the aid package, using shorthand to refer to the Los Angeles riots.

* THE BUSH-YELTSIN PARTNERSHIP. George Bush, the diplomatic equivalent of a locker-room towel snapper, and Boris Yeltsin, a blunt-spoken former construction boss, are gradually bonding after a notoriously slow start.

White House aides who once derided Yeltsin as a demagogue who drank too much have decided that he is a man of hidden virtues.

“There is a sporadic drinking problem, (but) it’s not as bad as it’s often portrayed,” a senior official said. “The important thing is that Yeltsin has a clear sense of strategic direction in favor of real reform.”

“They’re both very outgoing, they’re both handshake, retail politicians,” Fitzwater said, arguing that the two presidents--one a peasant’s son, the other a senator’s--are kindred spirits.

But even for Bush, Yeltsin’s rough-hewn ebullience can sometimes go too far.

At their last meeting at Camp David, Yeltsin startled Bush with a sudden declaration of friendship, saying, “I could hug you.”

“A Western politician is not prepared for that,” a Bush aide said dryly.

McManus reported from Washington and Dahlburg from Moscow. Staff writer James Gerstenzang in Washington contributed.