Leaders Give Yeltsin Thumbs-Up

While President Clinton forcefully asserted his support for Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, other world leaders also rallied around him:

* CANADA. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney said Tuesday that Canada will resume its grain exports to Russia. The shipments were suspended last fall because Russia had fallen behind on payments.

“I have had discussions with President Yeltsin about this,” Mulroney said Tuesday. “The matter is satisfactorily resolved.”

And Mulroney’s press secretary, Mark Entwistle, said that “Canada is considering an aid package above and beyond what we are already doing.”

Among the Group of Seven industrialized democracies, only Germany has contributed more aid per capita than Canada to the former Soviet Union.

* BRITAIN. In a message to Prime Minister John Major, Yeltsin has pledged to prevent a return of “totalitarian rule” in Russia, a British official said Tuesday.

The official said Yeltsin’s message, dated Monday and delivered Tuesday by Russian Ambassador Boris Pankin, expressed his “determination to move along the path of reform and democracy and prevent the return of totalitarian rule.”

Yeltsin was replying to a message of strong personal support sent to him by Major on Monday.

* JAPAN. Stung by criticism that it is cool on aid to Russia, Japan stepped up its public show of support Tuesday for Yeltsin.

“The Yeltsin administration respects human rights and is trying to introduce the principles of a market economy,” Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe was quoted in Japanese news reports as telling Parliament.

“Japan, as a member of the international community, is cooperating fully (to support Yeltsin’s reforms) and is not dragging its feet over the issue,” Watanabe was quoted as saying.

Tokyo is reluctant to extend substantial bilateral aid to Moscow until it returns four Pacific islands seized by Soviet troops at the end of World War II.