Boris, Don’t Ask : Clinton need not go to a Moscow summit as prerequisite for more U.S. aid

President Clinton, personally voicing strong support for beleaguered Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and the reforms he advocates, indicates that he remains ready to go through with the meeting the two leaders have planned in Vancouver April 3-4.

There Clinton intends to offer an augmented Russian aid package, the details of which his advisers are rushing to complete. But the impeachment threat Yeltsin now faces--the Congress of People’s Deputies could move against him this week--casts a long shadow of doubt over certainly the location and implicitly the timing of the conference.

It would be imprudent at best for Yeltsin to absent himself from Moscow at a time when his political life is on the line. The expected impeachment vote by the Congress well in advance of the planned summit is not expected to end the current constitutional crisis, only to propel it into a new and more anxious phase. Yeltsin of necessity must spend a lot of time trying to muster backers to resist the move to dump him.

In any event, as he well knows, in uncertain times Russian leaders invite certain risks if they stray too far from the capital. Nikita S. Khrushchev in 1964 and Mikhail S. Gorbachev in 1991 both thought a little out-of-town vacation would do them good. It didn’t. Khrushchev was ousted while he frolicked in the country and Gorbachev very nearly fell victim to a coup d’etat as he relaxed at the Black Sea. Let the would-be traveler beware.

It would be no less imprudent on the other side, we think, if Clinton agreed to shift the summit to Moscow, an idea now being bruited about. Some of the President’s advisers might see an open show of support for Yeltsin in a time of political crisis as evidence of Clinton’s boldness and commitment. The view from Russia could be quite different, with Clinton perceived--and resented--as a meddler in a profoundly important internal matter whose outcome is far from decided. Better in this case that he stay away from Moscow until the crisis is resolved, and best if that point were made to Clinton by Yeltsin himself. A new U.S. aid package, whose need is self-evident, can still be offered, independent of any face-to-face summit.