Clinton to Offer Russia, Others Chance at NATO

President Clinton has decided to extend a tentative invitation to Russia and other Eastern European countries to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but only after they “evolve” into reliable Western allies, a senior State Department official said Wednesday.

However, Clinton has no timetable in mind for allowing the former Communist nations into the 44-year-old Western military alliance, the official said.

If Russia and its neighbors became full members of NATO, that would formally commit the Atlantic Alliance’s other members--including the United States--to come to their defense if they were attacked.

At NATO’s next summit, scheduled for January, “we believe (the alliance) should formally open the door to NATO’s expansion as an evolutionary process,” said the official, an aide to Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who began a weeklong trip to Russia and the former Soviet Union on Wednesday.

In effect, while the decision was to “open the door” to Russia, Poland, Hungary and other countries that have expressed interest in NATO membership, it still leaves them standing anxiously on the threshold--without a firm invitation to come inside.

Officials said Clinton’s action was intended to begin answering three questions that have been debated within NATO ever since the end of the Cold War: What is the alliance’s mission now that it no longer defends Western Europe against a Soviet threat? What should the alliance do to help provide security for the nations of Eastern Europe? And how should it reply to their pleas for membership?

But it left several issues open.

One sensitive question is how Russia’s powerful military will react to the idea--including the possibility that some of their former Eastern European satellites might join NATO, their longtime enemy, before Russia does.

In August, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin said he sympathized with the Eastern Europeans’ interest in joining NATO. But a month later, apparently under pressure from his military, he wrote a letter to Clinton and other Western leaders warning that Russia could not afford to be isolated by such a process.

Another basic question is whether NATO’s other 15 members will endorse any new membership applications.

And U.S. officials left vague what criteria will finally be used for new membership.

As an initial, concrete measure, Clinton is also proposing a new program of military cooperation among NATO and its eastern neighbors, including joint training and exercises, possible peacekeeping forces and crisis management operations, officials said.