White House Puts Russia Aid Requests on Hold : Legislation: The Administration admits that Congress is unlikely to approve proposals now.

The White House acknowledged Tuesday that Congress is unlikely to approve additional U.S. aid requests for Russia now and said that it will delay such proposals until it can present a package intended to stimulate the U.S. economy.

George Stephanopoulos, the White House communications director, said that White House officials “just don’t think it’s possible to go forward . . . unless we’re also investing in the American economy. And that’s exactly what the President intends to do.”

His words acknowledged a point that Democratic congressional leaders have been making for days and signaled at least a temporary setback on legislation that Clinton has argued should be a top U.S. priority. The President has said that aid to support Russia’s fragile free-market democracy is necessary for U.S. security and could ultimately benefit Americans economically.

Congress has approved most of the $1.6 billion in aid offered at the meeting between Clinton and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin in Vancouver, Canada, earlier this month. Still outstanding is $1.1 billion in aid that is part of the 1994 budget request and $1.8 billion in assistance that the United States would provide as part of a package approved by the seven leading industrial nations--the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Italy and Germany--at a meeting this month in Tokyo.

Testifying Tuesday before a congressional panel, Secretary of State Warren Christopher made a strong pitch for further aid and said that Yeltsin’s electoral success Sunday, when he won a vote of confidence from the Russian people, gives the United States all the more reason to support his country.

“The worst we could do now would be to assume that in light of this weekend’s development, we could relax our efforts and assume that all is well,” Christopher told a Senate appropriations subcommittee.

Capitol Hill lawmakers who supported the aid package confirmed that it is all but dead in its present form. But several also expressed frustration over what they characterized as the Administration’s inept handling of the package, which they said has magnified the difficulties of passing it.

“The Administration was headed for a stimulus package-type defeat on Russian aid,” said one senator, who requested anonymity in exchange for speaking candidly. “The way they handled the aid package has been very sloppy.”

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that must approve foreign aid allocations, echoed the frustration when he suggested Tuesday that Congress should eliminate foreign assistance altogether this year.

“If we cannot get a foreign aid bill that gives help to Russia, then we might as well not have a foreign aid bill at all,” he said.

Other senators said that they doubt that Leahy was serious about eliminating all foreign aid, but his frustration reflected what aides said has been the Administration’s failure to heed the advice of Democratic lawmakers on how to proceed with the package in a year when domestic budget cuts and tax increases loom.

Late last week, the Administration finally showed signs of heeding the advice and began to think in terms of folding the new money for Russia into a $14-billion foreign aid budget request already presented to Congress.

But it continued to ignore warnings that the money would be approved only if a way could be found to finance the package without increasing the deficit.

That, in turn, left many lawmakers who want to do more for Russia this year feeling frustrated.

“The aid package, as presently conceived, is dead,” said Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.).

“They’ve got to find a way to repackage the assistance, and they’ve got to find a way to finance it without adding to the deficit or taking more money away from domestic programs,” added a House leadership aide.

Although some Democrats already were comparing Clinton’s potential embarrassment over Russian aid to the defeat of his economic stimulus package in the Senate, the dynamics of the two debates have as many differences as similarities.

With the stimulus package, Senate Republicans angered by the Administration’s failure to consult with them maintained party discipline and refused to vote to invoke cloture and end a filibuster and thus permit a vote on the President’s $16.3-billion domestic spending bill.

The Russian aid package, by contrast, enjoyed strong bipartisan support at the leadership level in both the House and the Senate--an advantage that apparently lulled the Administration into thinking it could be passed in spite of warnings that most rank-and-file lawmakers would oppose any overall increase in foreign aid this year.