Clinton Stresses Yeltsin Support : Diplomacy: At his first formal press conference, the President cites Russian’s courage. He implies that the leader’s foes lack legal and moral authority to oust him.

President Clinton forcefully reasserted his support for Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin on Tuesday as American and Russian officials indicated that the two leaders will meet as planned in Vancouver, Canada, on April 3 and 4.

Clinton, at his first formal press conference since taking office more than two months ago, said he continues to back Yeltsin and his fellow reformers, who are in the grip of a fierce struggle for power with the Russian Parliament.

He said Yeltsin’s challengers in Parliament are operating under a Communist-era constitution and implied that they lack the legal and moral authority to strip the president of his powers.

“He is a democratically elected national leader, indeed the first democratically elected president in a thousand years of Russian history,” Clinton told reporters in an afternoon session in the East Room of the White House. “He has United States support, as do his reform government and all reformers throughout Russia.”

Clinton added a few moments later: “Boris Yeltsin is the elected president of Russia, and he has shown a great deal of courage in sticking up for democracy and civil liberties and market reforms, and I’m going to support that.”

Clinton said the Russian president’s call for an April 25 referendum to settle the question of the legitimacy of his rule is “appropriate.”

“Our interest is to see that this process unfolds peacefully,” Clinton added. “We’re encouraged that President Yeltsin is committed to defend civil liberties, to continue economic reform, to continue foreign policy cooperation toward a peaceful world.

“Russia is and must remain a democracy,” he continued. “Democratic reform in Russia is the basis for a better future for the Russian people, for continued United States-Russian partnership, and for the hopes of all humanity for a more peaceful and secure world.”

Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev, visiting Washington for talks with Secretary of State Warren Christopher, said the Yeltsin government will not seek to move the summit to Moscow or another site within Russia.

Some officials here and in the Russian capital had suggested that it would be impolitic and unsafe for Yeltsin to leave the country in the midst of domestic political turmoil that could lead to his downfall. Earlier, in Moscow, Deputy Prime Minister Boris G. Fyodorov, who is responsible for economic policy, said the possibility of moving the summit site to Moscow was being discussed. He did not say who was discussing the idea or whether Yeltsin favored it.

“In the current situation, the president of Russia shouldn’t leave the country for long,” the Itar-Tass news agency quoted Fyodorov as saying.

But Kozyrev, leaving the State Department on Tuesday afternoon, said: “We have agreed upon an agenda and a place for this meeting, and we are concentrating not on revision of all this but on preparing a good stage for presidents to have a productive summit.”

The Russian diplomat also warned reporters not to “overdramatize” the situation in Moscow.

“Be alert . . . but don’t worry,” he said as he ducked into his car outside the State Department.

Clinton will meet with Kozyrev today. He said he anticipates talking to Yeltsin by telephone after the meeting to reiterate his support and to make final plans for the summit.

The President also said he is confident that Russia’s nuclear weapons are under adequate control but that U.S. intelligence agencies will continue to monitor them closely.

Clinton said he plans to present “an aggressive and quite specific plan” of political and financial aid for Yeltsin and other Russian leaders committed to democracy and economic reform at the Vancouver meeting.

While Clinton presented his view of the Russian crisis and his support for Yeltsin in convincing fashion, he betrayed some sensitivity to criticism from former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, among others, that he is issuing too categorical an endorsement of one man.

Some members of the Russian Parliament are calling for Yeltsin’s impeachment, and he has not received unambiguous backing from the armed forces. His hold on power, like that of the Soviet Union’s last leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, could unravel quickly in the face of a conservative revolt.

Asked if there is danger in giving Yeltsin too much support, Clinton said: “I don’t think so. . . . I’ve tried to be supportive of reformers throughout Russia and, indeed, throughout all the former Communist countries and the former republics of the Soviet Union.”

He declined to say whether the United States would continue to contribute to the economic rebuilding of Russia if Yeltsin was deposed.

“I don’t want to get into hypothetical situations because I don’t want anything I say or do to either undermine or rigidify the situation there,” he said.

But he added that U.S. policy toward the former Soviet states will be guided by three principles: opposition to the spread of nuclear weapons, support for the development of democracy and freedom for the people of Russia, and growth of a market economy.

“At every step along the way, with or without President Yeltsin in authority . . the United States will have those interests. And we will be guided by those interests,” Clinton said.

Kissinger said Tuesday that U.S. influence in Russia’s internal crisis is minimal and that Clinton’s repeated expressions of support could be doing Yeltsin more harm than good.

“We don’t want to maneuver ourselves into a position where every anti-Yeltsin group in Russia becomes anti-American and where Yeltsin looks as if he were an American instrument and then, if he wins, has to move to a more nationalistic direction,” Kissinger said on the CBS television program “This Morning.”

He said Clinton’s program of financial aid for Russia, now expected to cost about $700 million, would have only a marginal impact in such a huge country with an economy in tatters.

Clinton acknowledged that there are limits to what the West can do to promote democracy and economic renewal in Russia and the other states of the former Soviet Union. But he said that the United States is obliged by its position of global leadership to attempt to finance reform and fortify those in Russia who seek democratic transformation.

“I think in the end the Russian people will have to resolve this for themselves, and I hope they’ll be given the opportunity to do that in some appropriate fashion,” Clinton said. “I do not believe that we can be decisive in the sense that we can determine the course of events in Russia or, frankly, in the other republics of the former Soviet Union with which we also have a deep interest. But I do believe that we are not bystanders.”

On Capitol Hill, Strobe Talbott, Clinton’s choice to be a special ambassador who would coordinate U.S. policy toward the former Soviet Union, called Yeltsin “the personification of reform . . . the personification of a post-Soviet life” for Russia. However, he refused to characterize the Russian president’s parliamentary opposition.

In his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Talbott said that the Administration intentionally has refrained from saying whether Yeltsin’s assumption of extraordinary powers is legal or constitutional. He said the U.S. government expects Russian voters to determine that issue in the April 25 referendum.

“The deadlock is over legality and constitutionality,” he said. “They have to resolve that themselves. Too much kibitzing from us will not be helpful.”

Like Kissinger, Talbott warned that a “disturbing element of anti-American feeling inside the (Moscow) ring road” is developing among some Russian politicians. But he said that in the countryside, the United States enjoys strong popularity.

Committee members praised Talbott, a former senior editor of Time magazine and once Clinton’s roommate at Britain’s Oxford University; they said that his speedy confirmation is assured.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this report.