Be Generous, Russian Urges U.S. : Diplomacy: Moscow’s foreign minister presses West for phased entry to Group of Seven industrial nations.

Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev met Wednesday with President Clinton and appealed to Americans to approve a generous Russian aid package for the benefit of their country as well as his own.

Kozyrev, in a speech at American University here, vowed that American support for Russian reform “will pay off many times over in the form of American exports, more jobs in America and a more stable and predictable development of the world economy.” And he pressed the West to raise Russia’s economic status with admission, under a specific timetable, to the world’s leading industrial nations known as the Group of Seven.

Kozyrev said Russian officials “highly appreciate” the seven nations’ willingness to schedule a meeting about aid to Russia. But he said there nonetheless is a need for a “phased yet dynamic integration” of Russia into the group. Besides the United States, the so-called G-7 comprises Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Japan and Italy.

The foreign minister also asked Western nations to follow through on a promised $6-billion fund to help stabilize Russia’s currency, the ruble. And he tried to offer reassurance about Russia’s future, saying that there is no reason “to panic or predict civil war” despite the power struggle between President Boris N. Yeltsin and the national Parliament.

Kozyrev’s request to join the G-7 signaled the Russian government’s intense desire for a step that would sharply broaden the nation’s world influence--and bolster Yeltsin’s standing in the eyes of Russians. But despite its huge size, the Russian economy is in such dire straits that the request is not likely to be granted soon.

Clinton was noncommittal when asked before the meeting with Kozyrev whether he would favor Russia’s admission to the group.

“I wouldn’t rule out or in anything in particular,” he said. “Let’s just see what happens.”

Kozyrev made his pitch on a day when Clinton too was doing what he could to help the embattled Yeltsin government. He made calls to British Prime Minister John Major and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to discuss Western aid to Russia and declared that an aid package would be a “good investment” for America.

Clinton, who must win congressional approval for aid, said such assistance would “save the American people billions of dollars we don’t have to spend to maintain a nuclear arsenal. It will make the American people billions of dollars in future trade opportunities, and it will make the world a safer place.

“It is very much in our interest to keep Russia a democracy, to keep moving toward market reforms and to keep moving toward reducing the nuclear threat.”

Clinton and Kozyrev also discussed the contents of the aid package that the United States is expected to unveil when the President meets Yeltsin in Vancouver, Canada, and talked over other plans for the April 3-4 meeting.

The aid package is expected to include technical assistance, a rescheduling of Russian foreign debt, housing loan guarantees, help for Russian entrepreneurs and easier conditions on the currency stabilization fund from the West.

Clinton said he was “glad to have a firsthand account of what’s going on in Russia” from Kozyrev, but he declined to offer an opinion on the prospects for a resolution of the political impasse. “That’s something the Russians will have to work out among themselves,” he said.

U.S. and Russian officials insisted that they continue to plan for the summit in Vancouver, despite warnings from many sides that it may be risky for Yeltsin to leave Russia during his confrontation with the Russian Parliament.

In Clinton’s conversation with Major, both leaders agreed to discuss aid for Russia after next week’s Clinton-Yeltsin meeting. The two men discussed several channels for aid to Russia, including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Clinton and Mulroney discussed the possibilities of aid and the wisdom of Yeltsin leaving Russia for the meeting, which Mulroney will host. The Canadian prime minister told reporters Wednesday that he thinks it inadvisable for Yeltsin to leave his country at this time.

Clinton also is expected to call Yeltsin soon, although White House aides said there is no specific time set for the call.

After his meeting with Clinton, Kozyrev acknowledged that he believes U.S. aid will not be popular either in this country or in Russia. But he praised Clinton for being “action-oriented.”

“He’s not about . . . talk,” Kozyrev said. “I feel he’s about to act.”

Following his talks at the White House, Kozyrev conferred for another hour with Secretary of State Warren Christopher at the State Department. Christopher said that the meeting “established a very good, productive framework for the summit.”

Concerning Russia’s political turmoil, Christopher said that Kozyrev “has given me President Yeltsin’s assurance that he will do all he can to protect basic liberties and political freedoms” during the crisis.

He said Kozyrev also assured him that the Russian armed forces will “follow their historic pattern of not taking part in political controversy. We don’t have any information to the contrary.”

Elsewhere Wednesday, Clinton’s policies relating to Russia continued to attract criticism.

Former President Gerald R. Ford, in a television interview on CBS’ “This Morning,” said that Clinton should not tie United States interests exclusively to Yeltsin.

“I think we have to hedge our bets a bit, because Mr. Yeltsin’s only one person out of some 300 million of what were Soviet citizens,” Ford said.

And former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney criticized Clinton’s planned defense budget cuts as unwise in light of the turmoil in Russia. Planned cuts of $122 billion beyond the Bush Administration’s spending plan are a mistake because “this is going to continue, not just for a matter of weeks or months, but rather, years,” Cheney said on the Fox network’s “Morning News.”

Times staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this report.