Russian Parliament Ratifies Strategic Arms Pact, 157-1 : Nuclear cuts: Vote eases fears that hard-line nationalists could block progress on weapons control.

The Russian Parliament ratified the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty overwhelmingly Wednesday, easing fears that rising hard-line nationalism here would block progress in arms control.

The Supreme Soviet confirmed the key U.S.-Soviet arms pact in a 157-1 vote, ignoring objections by one lawmaker that the treaty favors America and complaints by another that ratification would look like a pandering present to President-elect Bill Clinton.

But the Parliament also said the agreement could not take full force until the other three nuclear republics of the former Soviet Union--Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan--sign the global non-proliferation treaty, which limits the spread of nuclear arms.

The three former Soviet republics have committed themselves to giving up their weapons and signing the non-proliferation treaty as non-nuclear states.

But Ukraine indicated recently that it may choose to remain a nuclear power. “The situation in Ukraine, where the Parliament is talking about its own nuclear umbrella, is very tense,” deputy Valery Menshikov said after the vote. “And we believe this decision of ours will help Ukraine choose the right course.”

Russia’s ratification of the pact Wednesday marked a major foreign policy victory for President Bush--two days too late to do the defeated incumbent any good.

Bush and then-Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed the START treaty, which set new limits on strategic nuclear missiles, bombers and warheads, in July, 1991.

Designed to reduce American and Soviet strategic arsenals by about a third, the pact was hailed as a giant step forward in superpower arms control. Even greater progress followed last June when Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and Bush agreed to the deepest nuclear arms cuts in history, promising to slash their arsenals by two-thirds over the next decade.

But specialists have voiced concern recently that arms control could fall victim to Russian nationalists who accuse Gorbachev and Yeltsin of kowtowing to the West and getting the worst of the treaties they signed. Talks have gone slowly on working out the details of the June agreement, and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev has increasingly become the target of conservatives’ wrath.

In Wednesday’s debate, Russian lawmaker Vitaly Sevastianov, a former cosmonaut, called for the ratification vote to be delayed because the timing was wrong and Russia lacks the money to dismantle its missiles. “Some people want to present (the treaty) on a silver platter to the United States’ President-elect,” he said.

Hard-liner Nikolai Pavlov said he distrusts the treaty because Gorbachev created it. He warned that Russia “will have to eliminate our best missiles, while the U.S.A. will be able to keep their best weapons.”

Counter-arguments came from Russian Defense and Foreign Ministry officials like Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Berdennikov, who contended that the treaty “is a real turn from the arms race to arms cuts. The parameters of our nuclear power will largely correspond to our economic capabilities.”

In the end, the hard-liners were outnumbered by deputies eager for further disarmament and good U.S.-Russian ties. And no one but Sevastianov emphasized the tie-in with American domestic politics.

“There is absolutely no connection between today’s ratification and the American elections,” deputy Yuri Petukhov said. “We don’t regard it either as a slap to Bush or a gift to Clinton. It’s simply the logical winding up of a laborious process.”

* RUSSIAN AID

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