West Gives Yeltsin $15 Billion in Debt Relief : Aid: The action on the eve of the U.S.-Russian summit is intended to help his embattled reforms.

On the eve of the U.S.-Russian summit here, President Boris N. Yeltsin’s embattled government won at least $15 billion in debt relief Friday from a West openly worried about his chances for political survival.

Canada and Britain also announced sizable increases in their aid programs for Russia.

Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who will serve as host to the Russian and American presidents when they arrive in this Pacific coast port city today for two days of meetings, told a news conference that the West needs to do much more to support Yeltsin and his policies.

“All the democracies have a vital interest in helping reform and helping Russia succeed,” Mulroney said.

In Moscow, British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd announced that in coming years, aid from his country will be doubled to 120 million pounds, or about $180 million. A big chunk of the aid will be disbursed through the British Know-How Fund, designed to provide Russia with expertise in building a free-market economy as it dismantles Communist central planning, he said.

The focus of the meetings between Yeltsin and President Clinton will be accelerated, large-scale U.S. assistance to Russia.

Yeltsin, who faces a referendum April 25 that could result in his being stripped of power or having to run again, has urged the United States and its allies to speed up aid before it is too late. He is expected to hammer that viewpoint home to Clinton here.

Finally heeding Russian officials’ pleas, Western governments announced in Paris on Friday that they had reached agreement on a debt-rescheduling pact that will allow Moscow to cut back its repayments of debt and interest to $3.5 billion a year.

That decision, sought for more than a year by Yeltsin’s ministers, means Russia will now be allowed to keep and spend on its own social and economic needs about $15 billion in foreign currency earnings, largely from oil and gas sales, that otherwise would have gone to repay foreign governments and commercial banks.

Russia had been facing $7 billion in debt repayments this year, plus $8 billion that was supposed to have been reimbursed last year.

Russian officials have protested that their cash-strapped country can’t afford to allocate more than $3 billion or so annually to debt service. By insisting on prompt reimbursement, the Russians say, Western creditors were undermining Russia’s fragile proto-market economy at the precise moment that it needs maximum support.

Under the accord, signed in Paris by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander N. Shokhin, debts inherited from the former Soviet Union and falling due in 1993 will be stretched out over 10 years, a financial source in the French capital said.

The new Canadian assistance package announced by Mulroney is a mixed bag of measures valued at $200 million. Mulroney said Canada will ship as soon as possible 477,000 tons of wheat that had been held back after Russia defaulted on repaying loans contracted to buy 1 million tons of Canadian grain.

Canada will also increase technical assistance to Russia by $105 million, including the annual training of at least 50 managers in an already existing program bearing the Kremlin leader’s name--the “Yeltsin Democracy Fellowship Program.”

Mulroney’s government will also contribute $10 million to develop a “northern development strategy” to aid the aboriginal peoples of both Canada and Russia, and $30 million in credits to help Russia buy Canadian-made medical and health equipment for Russia’s infants and youth.