Yeltsin Sees Chance to Help Modernize China’s Weapons

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin said Thursday that Russia sees tremendous prospects for military cooperation with China and could undertake a large-scale overhaul of China’s 1950s-era Soviet weapons.

“The prospects are very, very great,” Yeltsin told reporters when asked about future Sino-Russian military dealings as he strolled along the serpentine fortifications of the Great Wall of China.

The Russian president’s enthusiasm is likely to bring a Cold War shiver to those who recall the frightening specter of the double Communist colossus created by the Sino-Soviet alliance of the 1950s.

But Russian officials hastened to emphasize that they are not seeking any kind of defense treaty with China; instead they are simply trying to improve overall relations with their populous neighbor and earn badly needed money selling arms. According to Russia’s new foreign policy doctrine, approved just two weeks ago, “Russia has no enemies and no need to participate in any military-political alliances,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky said Thursday.

He acknowledged, however, that Yeltsin plans to sign a Sino-Russian declaration today that is meant to cement a “special” relationship between the two countries.

The declaration says that neither Russia nor China “will participate in any military-political alliances aimed against the other party.” It also obligates them to prevent their territory from being used by a third country for attacks.

Yeltsin said he plans to discuss military affairs with Chinese leaders today and that he expects talks to begin soon on pulling back troops from the 2,750-mile-long Russo-Chinese border and cutting their number. “I think that to raise the level of trust, we will start negotiations to pull back from the border, from both sides,” he said.

Russian officials say they have reached basic accord with the Chinese over reducing troops in a zone 60 miles deep on each side of the border and on setting up a “stability zone” there.

Indicating that Russia is eager to return to providing the kind of extensive arms supplies to China that it did in the 1950s, Yeltsin said that Sino-Russian military cooperation has great potential “because in the old days of the Soviet Union, a lot of military equipment came here from the Soviet Union, and to restore it takes parts”--parts that Russia can furnish.

Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Shokhin, also out for an official meander on the Great Wall, said that Russia expects to continue selling sophisticated weapons systems to China, despite some objections from the West.

Bush Administration officials and American defense analysts have warned in recent weeks that Russia is selling large quantities of advanced military technology to China. They have also voiced concern about Russia’s recent sale of 24 SU-27 fighter planes as well as missile guidance systems to Beijing.

But Shokhin said, “We’ve found that every time the Americans complain about our arms sales it’s only because they themselves wanted to sell the same type of weapons to the same country.”

Russia will not sell offensive weapons to China, he said, and will avoid upsetting the balance of forces in the Pacific region, but Moscow plans to keep hawking its fighter planes and antiaircraft systems.

He said Russia is discussing the possibility of Russian-Chinese production of fighter planes and will also provide maintenance and repair factories for the fighters it has already sold China.

Shokhin also did not deny reports that Beijing is interested in purchasing an unfinished aircraft carrier, started under the Soviet regime.

According to the Russian media, China is also interested in buying submarines and surface-to-air rockets from Russia. Russian-Chinese trade is expected to amount to $5 billion this year, with at least $1 billion of it in arms sales, according to Russian officials.

Yeltsin’s comments on military cooperation conformed with the baldly pragmatic approach both sides are taking to the three-day visit he began Thursday. Twenty-one agreements on everything from terrorism to nuclear power plant construction are expected to be signed today in evidence of new heights of Sino-Russian friendship.

Chinese leaders are known to privately condemn Yeltsin as a foe of the communism they still espouse, and China as a country came off as the friendliest to the hard-line junta that tried to take power in the Soviet Union in August, 1991.

But in public they have been nothing but “warm” and “cordial”--diplomatic language for all going well--during Yeltsin’s visit.

Meantime, in Moscow, Yeltsin’s office said that Yegor T. Gaidar, the acting prime minister recently ousted by the conservative Congress of People’s Deputies, will serve as an economic adviser to the Russian president. Western lenders and governments have considered Gaidar’s presence vital to ensuring that Russia undertakes the drastic reforms it must to convert from a state-controlled to a market economy.