Summit Prepares to Condemn Iran : Terrorism: After repeated prodding by the Americans, G-7 leaders are expected to cite Tehran for exporting violence and abusing its people’s rights.

TOKYO — Leaders at the seven-nation economic summit, after repeated American prodding, plan to strongly condemn Iran today for exporting terrorism, accumulating weapons of mass destruction and abusing its people’s human rights, Secretary of State Warren Christopher said.

The condemnation, contained in a political declaration issued on the second day of the annual G-7 meeting, was approved by President Clinton and the leaders of the other member nations--Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Japan--after what American sources called “overwhelming evidence” of Iran’s culpability had been presented.

The behavior of Iraq and Libya also was condemned, as it has been in previous communiques. But this marks the first time that the major industrial nations have so sharply criticized Iran.

As such, today’s declaration represents a significant victory for the Clinton Administration, which had lobbied hard to include Tehran in the declaration as part of its policy of seeking to contain both Iran and Iraq.

In the past, particularly under President George Bush, American policy tilted back and forth between Baghdad and Tehran, depending on which was perceived as representing the more immediate threat to American interests. The result, in the view of Clinton Administration officials, was that both countries over time acquired military equipment and technology that eventually proved dangerous.

Now, American officials hope, the G-7 declaration will make it easier to tighten controls on the transfer of military equipment and militarily useful technology to both countries.

Japan and Germany in the past have resisted proposals to condemn Iran. But a senior State Department official said that, after being presented with overwhelming evidence, “they came around.” Part of the evidence--that Iran has “a very serious program of state-sponsored terrorism that has to be combatted”--was developed by American intelligence and confirmed by European intelligence, the official said.

Today’s communique also stresses the importance of containing the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the need for more humanitarian aid in that war-ravaged country.

Last year, the summit leaders adopted a much stronger statement on the Bosnian conflict, declaring that, if necessary, military action should be taken to end the carnage.

But today’s statement focuses on the peace negotiations going on in Geneva and makes no mention of military action. It merely declares that Serbs and Croats should not be able to dictate terms for a peace agreement.

Asked why summit leaders had sidestepped the question of military action in the Balkans, Christopher said: “It’s a far different situation now than it was last year. The situation is much more difficult to deal with now than it would have been last year or two years ago.”

The allies, Christopher said, have agreed to maintain sanctions against Serbia as long as the war continues; he said that represents “significant leverage” to keep the Serbs and Croats from dictating terms of a peace agreement. Still, the weaker statement reflected the continuing inability of the United States and its European allies to agree upon an effective course of action to stop the Balkans carnage.

The summit declaration also:

* Calls on North Korea not to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The United States, concerned about the spread of nuclear weapons worldwide, wants the treaty extended indefinitely but that has become a sensitive issue since North Korea threatened to pull out of the agreement, raising the threat of a new and potentially hostile nuclear power in Asia.

* Urges that the countries of the former Soviet Union give high priority to assuring the security of their nuclear weapons and calls upon Ukraine to ratify the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

* Expresses support for democratic and free-market forces in Russia and for Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.

* Views the recent meeting between Yeltsin and President Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine as a good sign for the Ukrainian reform process and for relations between the two countries.

Determined to avoid an ineffectual response to the problems posed by Tehran, Clinton and Christopher have “raised the question of Iran and our concern about the increasingly disruptive role they’re having” in almost every meeting they have attended with foreign leaders over the past several months, a senior White House official said.

Clinton telephoned both German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and British Prime Minister John Major last week to express his concern and enlist their support.

The summit condemnation of Iran is especially important, a White House official said, because it will “get the Europeans and others--in terms of export controls and things like that--to be much more vigilant than they were with Iraq, or for that matter than we were with Iraq” before the Gulf War.

Like other summits, the annual G-7 gathering combines an endless round of formal ceremonies, official sessions, elegant lunches and dinners and--for American Presidents--public appearances designed to project images and messages of leadership to ordinary people.

As a result of all this, plus the less visible but no less real burdens of jet lag that go with transpacific travel, aides said Clinton went to bed tired but ebullient Wednesday night after an 18-hour day.

His exhausting schedule had him make a well-received speech at Waseda University, take a stroll with his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, through a Tokyo shopping center, attend the opening G-7 sessions--his first--deliver a sound-bite statement extolling the breakthrough on trade negotiations, dominate a dinner discussion of summit leaders and hold a bilateral discussion with Major.

“The President has just gone to bed, or at least headed off that way, after what he thought was a very good day, but a long day,” David Gergen, the White House counselor, told reporters at a briefing shortly before midnight Wednesday.

At the dinner, Clinton initiated a freewheeling discussion of the performance and future of the United Nations, the kind of discussion he thrives on but which is not common at such gatherings. The leaders talked about how to coordinate and better prepare military forces that can be used in U.N. operations, whether for peacekeeping or peacemaking, Gergen said.

They discussed other issues, including the criteria for intervention, how to keep funding for peacekeeping at an adequate level and the criteria for recognizing new states in the United Nations.

Gergen, aware that this is Clinton’s first major turn on the world stage and that questions exist about his ability to maintain America’s global dominance, declared that while other leaders have played an active role in the summit, the President has taken the most forceful stance and initiated much of the agenda. He said Clinton had kept the emphasis on jobs and structural unemployment that has been a major focus of discussions.

With Clinton’s initial successes here, especially the breakthrough announced earlier on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, White House officials no longer feel under pressure to try to reach agreement with the Japanese on a new framework for a trade agreement before the summit ends.

“Now that the President has a win on GATT, we can take a more critical look at what the Japanese are offering on a framework agreement,” said a senior official. “And some of it’s not too good. We would rather not have an agreement that would give us three days of good news and three years of headaches.”