Asian Peace Part of Balanced Foreign Policy, Yeltsin Says

Visiting President Boris N. Yeltsin said Friday that Moscow wants to keep the peace among Russia, China and India as part of a new foreign policy more balanced between East and West.

“Peaceful relations among the three . . . could be a stabilizing factor, not only in Asia but in the world,” he said.

Yeltsin spoke at the end of a three-day visit during which he solved a debt dispute with India and agreed to speed the supply of military spare parts here.

His remarks and the agreements with India, a longtime Soviet friend and arms buyer, were meant in part to quiet criticism from hard-liners back home that he is too pro-American.

“We have neither a pro-Western nor a pro-Eastern foreign policy,” Yeltsin told a news conference.

Yeltsin agreed to lower Indian debt repayments to Russia over the next 12 years in order to boost bilateral trade, which fell from $5.5 billion in 1990 to $1.5 billion in 1992. Yeltsin and Indian Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao said Russian-Indian trade could reach $3.5 billion in 1994.

Yeltsin said Russia also will build one or two factories in India to produce parts for India’s mostly Soviet-supplied arsenal.

In an address to Parliament repeatedly interrupted by applause, Yeltsin backed India in its conflict with Pakistan over the Kashmir region and said Moscow has no intention of giving military or technological aid to Pakistan.