Helping Russia Faster

Clinton Administration aides are working overtime to put together a new aid program for the President to offer Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin when the two meet April 3 in Vancouver. A heightened sense of political urgency is guiding U.S. planners. Last week’s tumultuous meeting in Moscow of the Congress of People’s Deputies left Yeltsin’s political future precarious. The aid plan Clinton wants to be able to present in Canada aims as much at propping up Yeltsin as at supporting the economic reforms he has fostered. But it’s the continuation of those reforms that must be of paramount interest.

The Administration is likely to focus for now on help that will provide quick and visible benefits. That could include emergency shipments of pharmaceuticals for Russia’s troubled health care system, new ways to finance imports of animal feeds--a prospect that farm-state members of the U.S. Congress will relish--and financing for U.S. equipment to revive Russia’s run-down oil and natural gas production.

No dollar figure has yet been put on this approach, though Clinton earlier indicated a readiness to boost direct Russian aid from $417 million to $700 million. Non-government experts argue for more, perhaps as much as $3 billion in short-term aid, with other industrial nations chipping in their fair share. But Clinton must tread carefully. In this era of austerity, Congress is likely to be chary about approving much more than a modest increase in aid to Russia.

Clinton must be chary as well about seeming to identify American hopes for Russia’s progress too intimately with the issue of Yeltsin’s own fate. Western interests clearly lie in having Russia move steadily toward a market economy and the development and strengthening of democratic institutions. These must remain the priority concerns, whatever Yeltsin’s own political future may hold. His pro-Western sympathies are helpful, but it’s important not to make the mistake that George Bush made with Mikhail Gorbachev--indicating he was indispensable.