Summit Is a Coup for Vancouver : Meeting: The two presidents will be afforded a magnificent view--if the fog lifts and the rain stops.

Nestled up against the mist-shrouded mountains of the Coast Range and sitting astride the crossroads of Asia and North America, Vancouver will serve as a scenic and fitting site for the first formal meeting of President Clinton and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.

If the fog should lift and the soul-soaking rains should stop, the two world leaders will be treated to a panorama of extraordinary natural beauty and a view of the relentless growth of transpacific trade in resources, capital and people.

Their visit here will encompass a stroll among the towering Douglas firs that line the coast, a tour of the continent’s foremost collection of native American arts and crafts, a cruise through the bustling harbor where ships laden with Canadian grain embark for Russia, and maybe a few innings of an international exhibition baseball game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Seattle Mariners.

In a restaurant in majestic Queen Elizabeth Park, Clinton and Yeltsin will dine on local Dungeness crab, Pacific salmon, maple ice cream and blueberries.

But they’ll probably take a pass on a parallel summit being held at the Marble Arch bar, a raucous local strip joint. It is featuring a strip-off between Miss Nude Russia and Miss Nude U.S.A.

In a city where business interests and ecologists clash constantly over commercial development and the exploitation of the region’s resources, the summit weekend will be a time to declare a two-day truce and compete peaceably for the world’s attention.

Darcy Rezac, managing director of the Vancouver Board of Trade, said the summit was worth $70 million in free advertising for the city. “There’s no way we could buy that kind of visibility,” he said.

Rezac added that the value of the publicity and the estimated $10 million to be spent by the 4,000-strong horde of international journalists dwarf the direct costs to the city of $2 million to $3 million for security and sprucing up.

At the other pole from the pro-growth Board of Trade are Greenpeace and half a dozen other environmental groups, who hope to showcase their causes before a global audience this weekend.

Greenpeace, which was founded here, unfurled two huge banners atop the defunct Woodward’s department store tower. The 50-foot-long banners are addressed to “Bill” and “Boris” and urge them, in English and Russian, to “Stop Nuke Testing.”

Greenpeace hopes to tow similar banners behind an airplane and boats within sight of today’s and Sunday’s Clinton-Yeltsin meetings.

“We chose disarmament as the issue because we’re getting closer to persuading the Clinton Administration that a (nuclear testing) moratorium is possible,” said Vancouver Greenpeace spokeswoman Tamara Stark.

Another environmental group, the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, hopes to intercept Clinton if he jogs, as expected, along the seawall in Stanley Park, across the Coal Harbor from the downtown skyscrapers.

A spokesman for the committee said he hopes to press the group’s preservationist message on the U.S. President.

But given the intense security precautions, it’s unlikely that any protester will get within hailing distance of Clinton or Yeltsin. Very few ordinary Vancouverites will do so either.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who are coordinating security for the summit, are sanitizing the main meeting sites under the watchful eye of the U.S. Secret Service and Russian presidential security agents. Streets and bridges will be closed for the presidential motorcades, as the Mounties whisk Clinton and Yeltsin around town in their bullet-and-bombproof limousines.

Police have also demanded that all hotel room windows overlooking the Canada Place meeting hall where Clinton and Yeltsin will appear together Sunday be sealed.

The first meeting of the two leaders will take place at Norman MacKenzie House, the 7,000-square-foot residence of the president of the University of British Columbia, David W. Strangway. The ocher stucco mansion commands a breathtaking view of the Strait of Georgia from its perch on a bluff 500 feet above Wreck Beach, western Canada’s most celebrated nude beach.

After lunch, Clinton and Yeltsin plan to take a walk in the woods full of fir, cedar and ginkgo trees to the university’s Museum of Anthropology, which boasts an unparalleled collection of native crafts, including dozens of huge totem poles.

After the museum visit, the two repair to MacKenzie House for the first formal talks of the summit. Dinner will be at Seasons in the Park, a gourmet restaurant hidden in the forests of Queen Elizabeth Park. Advance workers have already installed an extra 48 secure telephone lines to the restaurant so that the two presidents don’t miss any important calls.

Yeltsin spends the night in his penthouse suite at the Pan Pacific Hotel on the waterfront, while Clinton is bedding down at the more prosaic Hyatt Regency inland, chosen for its American ownership and unionized staff.

Throughout the weekend, those with commerce or a cause in mind will try to garner the attention of the news-starved media throng. Environmentalists will be joined by antiabortion forces, evangelists and a Jewish group seeking freedom for convicted spy Jonathan Pollard.

And, as always, the merchants will try their best to cash in.

At the Marble Arch, construction worker Tom Roche, 21, took a break to join the large lunchtime crowd to see for himself what summitry was all about. Sadly for him, Miss Nude Russia and Miss Nude U.S.A.--”the superpowers of striptease”-- were not performing. He had to settle for a stripper with no political pretensions.

He took it philosophically.

“It’s total opportunism, with the summit here and all,” Roche said. “They want to milk it for all they can get. But that’s the way it always is, eh?”