Yeltsin Takes Summit Success to the Voters

Bolstered by a smooth summit and promises of new U.S. aid, President Boris N. Yeltsin charged back into the Russian political arena Monday, trying to parlay his diplomatic success into support where it counts most.

Stopping on his way back to Moscow in the Siberian city of Bratsk, he launched what is expected to be a campaign of cross-country barnstorming to court voters before the April 25 referendum on his presidency that will decide his political fate.

Meeting workers at a mammoth aluminum factory, Yeltsin repeated his summit statement that today’s Russia has no real alternative to him as president and urged them to vote “yes” on the plebiscite question that will ask if they trust him.

“If you trust the president, then it’s possible to act,” he told Bratsk residents, according to the Interfax news agency.

With most Russians still barely aware that the two-day summit in Vancouver yielded pledges of $1.6 billion in U.S. aid, Yeltsin’s team of ministers was already at work portraying the meeting’s results in the best possible light.

Deputy Prime Minister Alexander N. Shokhin, speaking during a stopover on the remote Kamchatka Peninsula, emphasized that Yeltsin’s main summit achievement was not the promised aid but President Clinton’s willingness to consider Russia a full-fledged economic partner.

“The main item that we discussed was Russian access to world markets,” he said, “including those of uranium and commercial satellite launches.

“Granting Russia the possibility to earn money on the international market . . . and thereby allowing Russia to work itself out of its difficult economic situation--that is the main thing that was the focus of attention at the summit,” Shokhin said.

For his part, Yeltsin touted the U.S. aid pledges as more concrete and controllable than previous attempts at assistance.

“Before, talk of $24 billion was blurted out as an advertisement, and no one worried about how the money was used,” he told Bratsk residents. “Now, everything is concrete, it will be controlled from April on, and that’s very important.”

In the first Russian press reaction to the summit, the liberal newspaper Izvestia gave the U.S. aid package high marks, headlining its Monday edition: “B. Yeltsin Returns From Vancouver With a Concrete and Realistic Program for Supporting Russian Reforms.”

The Izvestia account of the summit highlighted Clinton’s powerful personal support for Yeltsin and agreed with the Russian president that none of the summit agreements should provide fodder for his potent domestic opposition.

Russian Television commentator Nikolai Svanidze also praised Clinton for his decisive support and noted that Yeltsin, too, deserved credit for not trying to curry favor with nationalists at home by “talking with Clinton in a patriotically firm manner.”

Despite media praise, however, Yeltsin’s political foes were already criticizing the aid package as a well-meant effort that could not have any real effect on a country the size of Russia.

“Russia is too big for any Western aid to be effective enough,” hard-line lawmaker Mikhail Astafiev said. “As for the amount of the aid--the amount is exactly enough for Yeltsin to stay in power by launching an earlier propaganda campaign. This will hardly affect the state of the economy.”

Economist Pavel Bunich, normally a Yeltsin backer, noted that “the aid is very, very modest” and recalled that Russia has generally received only a fraction of the assistance that Western countries promise.

“We’ve been given help, and we should say ‘Thank you,’ ” Bunich said. “But we should not exaggerate its importance.”

For Yeltsin, the stopover in Siberia was especially opportune because a large hunk of the aid will go to the energy industry, allowing him to tell Bratsk residents that “much of (the U.S.) support for reforms in Russia will go to this part--Siberia and the Far East.”

The Russian president also broached a surprising strategy for the April 25 referendum. He told voters that in order not to get mixed up, they could vote “yes” on all four of the ballot’s planned questions--including the one that asks whether they favor early presidential elections.

“Don’t be afraid to say ‘yes,’ ” he told Bratsk workers, apparently ready to face new elections rather than continue his chronic conflict with the current Congress of People’s Deputies, the conservative Parliament that has blocked many of his moves toward reform. Another of the referendum questions asks voters whether they favor early elections for the Congress.

Yeltsin has said that if he does not garner 50% in the referendum, he will resign. He claims, however, that he needs only 50% of votes cast, while his opponents argue he needs 50% of all registered voters. The dispute is to be decided by Russia’s highest court.

Meanwhile, a new minor crisis appeared to be brewing in Russian politics over Ukraine’s reluctance to give up its nuclear weapons.

The Russian government issued a sharply worded statement Monday, accusing Ukraine of planning to hold on to its strategic arms despite its previous agreements to relinquish them.

“The situation concerning nuclear weapons in Ukraine has sharply deteriorated,” the government warned. Ukraine maintains that the missiles “are Ukrainian property,” which Russia interprets as “Ukraine’s claim to the possession of nuclear weapons.”

Ukraine had agreed to get rid of all its nuclear missiles by the end of 1994. But the Ukrainian Parliament has been hesitant to ratify the first strategic nuclear arms reduction pact (START I), under which it is to give up the 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles it inherited from the Soviet Union.

Ukrainian lawmakers have said that continuing instability in Russia makes them even more reluctant to give up control of the weapons.

The Russian government proposed Monday that to allay concern over the condition of the Ukrainian missiles, Ukraine at least agree to detach their warheads and let Russia haul away their nuclear charges for destruction.

Russia also proposed removing targeting information from the missiles over the next few months to make absolutely certain they could not be used.

If the argument over the Ukrainian missiles is not resolved, Russia said, it could jeopardize the entire process of disarmament.

Senior Ukrainian officials quickly rejected the Russian accusation, assuring a 14-person U.S. congressional delegation that Ukraine will ratify START I.

“We believe the Ukrainians continue to be behind the statement they made that they wish to be a non-nuclear power,” Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), House majority leader and head of the visiting delegation, told reporters after talks with government ministers.