VANCOUVER SUMMIT: THE PRICE OF REFORM : Bonn, Tokyo Offer No Major Immediate Aid

While President Clinton promised at the Vancouver summit that the world will mobilize swiftly to provide Russia with the assistance it needs, in at least two key capitals--here and Bonn--officials on Sunday offered supportive words but no big, immediate pledges of new aid.

While the Japanese were digging into their pockets to find something to contribute, the Germans were repeating their warning that their own unification efforts and stumbling economy may leave them tapped out as far as more aid for Russia is concerned.

Japanese officials also insisted that large-scale assistance to Russia will have to wait until longstanding territorial differences between Moscow and Tokyo are resolved.

Japan’s $2.8 billion thus far in commitments for Russian aid ranks it above Britain but below Italy, a country with an economy a fraction the size of Japan’s.

Of the sum Japan has committed to Russia, $800 million has been spent; about $1.8 billion of the total is in the form of trade insurance for oil and gas projects.

Japanese officials say a new package now being prepared might include $600 million to $700 million in debt relief as well as new measures to help Russia’s energy industry. Japan is also likely to offer “seed money” to help Russian start-up companies and to help privatize public companies.

But “big bilateral assistance won’t get public support. . . . If (the) aid focuses on areas like energy and small business assistance that will help Russia stand on its own feet, it will be easier to justify,” said a Foreign Ministry official reached late Sunday night at his office, where he was at work on the outlines of a potential new Japanese aid package for Moscow.

In Tokyo, considerable media attention focused Sunday on Clinton’s 20-minute telephone call before the summit to Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, briefing him on America’s plans for Russian aid.

The call--a front-page story in Japan’s Sunday papers--appeared to the Japanese to be a minor diplomatic coup. The gesture was appreciated by Japan, a Foreign Ministry official said, noting that “when (President) Bush announced the $24-billion (Russian aid) package last year, he didn’t call Miyazawa.”

In Bonn, officials noted that support for Yeltsin was a key topic of discussion last week between Clinton and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Kohl visited Washington and repeatedly has called on the United States, and especially Japan, to share the burden of helping Russia and the other republics that made up the Soviet Union.

“Naturally, aid to the (former Soviet republics) came up,” a government spokeswoman said Sunday night. “But no concrete figures were discussed. Chancellor Kohl stressed that Yeltsin must be supported.”

Germany claims to have provided 55% of all international aid to the former Soviet republics since 1989, when former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika (restructuring) led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Besides the $30 billion provided by Bonn, private German charities have sent tons of food and clothing to the former Soviet republics.

Some of the German aid was part of a deal Bonn struck with Moscow permitting Germany’s unification in October, 1990. In exchange for the withdrawal of 300,000 or so Red Army troops from what was East German soil, Bonn now must subsidize housing back home for the returning soldiers.

But Kohl has repeatedly said over the past year that German generosity has been tapped out as Germany’s normally robust economy staggers under the unexpectedly high costs of rebuilding the decrepit eastern region. The Bonn government, now confronted with a serious recession, has indicated that Germany can no longer be expected to keep pumping huge sums of money into Russia.

At the same time, however, Germany is especially mindful of the importance of stability in Russia and the other former Soviet republics. In addition to its obvious political and security concerns, Germany fears that more turmoil to the east could lead to a mass exodus of refugees. With one of the world’s most liberal asylum policies, Germany already has given shelter to more than 1 million foreigners since the collapse of the Iron Curtain.

Most applicants ultimately are turned down because they cannot prove they were victims of persecution in their homelands. But a bureaucratic bottleneck drags the review process on for months and even years, and asylum seekers live on public aid while they wait for rulings on their applications.

(Ethnic Germans who have lived in the former Soviet republics automatically qualify for German citizenship; Jews from the republics also are taken in without restrictions.)

In Tokyo, attention on the Russian aid proposals has been heightened by Japan’s plan to host a meeting next week of Cabinet-level officials from the wealthy Group of Seven countries (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States). G-7 leaders plan to discuss Russian aid, and the Japanese do not want to be excluded from assuming what they feel is their proper role of having global influence.

But Clinton’s personal attention to the Russian aid issue also may have increased the pressure on Japan to come up with a meaningful package.

Miyazawa, who is struggling with his own domestic problems--including political scandals and a flagging economy--needs Clinton’s backing to make him look like an astute world leader when the two meet in Washington on April 16 and again at a July G-7 summit.

If Miyazawa’s popularity rating remains at its current lows, the ruling party could lose seats in the fall parliamentary elections and Miyazawa could lose his chance for a second term.

But for the Japanese, developing an adequate Russian aid package will be tough. With Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe in weak health and Vice Foreign Minister Hisashi Owada preoccupied with the June wedding of his daughter to the crown prince, the Foreign Ministry is ill equipped to deal with its biggest problem--the dearth of public support for the international effort to save Yeltsin.

The Shukan Bunshun, one of Japan’s most widely circulated weeklies, seemed to sum up much of the public sentiment here on Russian aid when it ran an April 1 article headlined “Let Yeltsin Starve.” Hiromi Teraya, an Aoyama Gakuin University professor, wrote in the accompanying article, “We would be better off throwing the money down the gutter than giving it to Russia.”

Japan is still smarting from Yeltsin’s last-minute cancellation of a planned visit last fall. “Yeltsin never apologized,” said Hachiro Nakagawa, a Tsukuba University professor, who added, “Just the fees for canceling the receptions for him were huge.”

In an October newspaper poll, 80% of the respondents said they did not like Russia, the worst showing ever.

Japan is frustrated by the Russians’ lack of progress toward returning four northern islands they seized in the last days of World War II. Russia has not even fulfilled its promise to begin withdrawing troops stationed on the disputed turf, officials say.

The Japanese also contrast their chilly ties with Russia with the friendly relations they have with China, which has received tens of billions of dollars in aid from Japan.

While Russia and its Siberian leader may be unpopular, many Foreign Ministry officials fear that Yeltsin’s fall could result in Moscow’s return to a military government that might threaten Japan. “I’m frankly worried,” said a senior Foreign Ministry official. “I do hope Yeltsin and his reform-minded administration will succeed.”

Helm reported from Tokyo and Jones from Bonn.