Zhirinovsky Calls Clinton a ‘Coward’

Ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky on Thursday called President Clinton a “coward” and a “soft man” who should stay home and play the saxophone if he is afraid to meet with the top vote-getter in Russia’s recent elections.

“All of you in the West have become rotten and moldy,” the extremist leader said. “That is why you are afraid that a new honest and brave man has emerged in Russia. You want us to be weak and to rot together with you. . . . Rot without us!”

With his mixture of bonhomie and venom, Zhirinovsky said he is ready to sit down for peaceful and friendly meetings with Clinton, as well as with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and French President Francois Mitterrand--but that they are all afraid of him.

Clinton, who will arrive in Moscow on Wednesday, has said that he is prepared to meet with a wide range of Russian leaders--except Zhirinovsky, whose racist, anti-Semitic and bellicose statements have prompted comparisons with Hitler and Mussolini.

“I want to tell him that we should have good, normal relations and he should not be afraid to meet me,” Zhirinovsky said. “He should not show that he is such a coward. He should meet me personally, and I will tell him everything.

“There is only one party in this country, tell him that,” Zhirinovsky said of his misleadingly named Liberal Democratic Party. “Some President of the United States of America he is! Let him play his saxophone back home instead of coming here to meet with nobodies!”

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Immediately after his election, a jubilant Zhirinovsky had said that he would be delighted to meet Clinton and invited the American President to join him for a Russian sauna. Zhirinovsky also said in English that his wife would like to meet “Madam Hillary.”

Zhirinovsky headed the national Liberal Democratic Party ticket that placed first in the December parliamentary elections with 23% of the vote. He was elected to the Duma, or lower house of Parliament, from the city of Shchelkovo, about 18 miles northeast of Moscow.

After election officials there handed him his lawmaker’s identity card Thursday, he boasted, “The next ID card I get will be as president of Russia.”

Indulging his penchant for colorful language, dark humor and bald threats, Zhirinovsky announced that he “did not give a damn” about the Poles now that they have forced Russian troops to leave, and said Russians would not lift a finger to help the Poles if Germany tried to take back Eastern Prussia, now part of Poland. He also called former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev a “scoundrel.”

“Even Gorbachev has gone crazy and is saying I am a creature of the KGB,” Zhirinovsky said. “He is a scoundrel. He ruined the Soviet Union and is now tortured by remorse.”

At one point, Zhirinovsky delivered a diatribe to a Japanese television reporter, advocating a naval blockade of Japan if it refuses to sign a peace treaty with Russia.

“You want to fight with us? Let’s fight,” Zhirinovsky said, leaning into the television cameras. “Tomorrow the Pacific fleet will blockade the Japanese islands and you will starve to death.”

Japan and Russia never signed a peace treaty after World War II because of their conflicting claims to the southern Kurils, a group of islands northeast of Japan that have become a symbol for nationalists in both counties.

“You want the islands? I can tell you you’re never going to get them,” Zhirinovsky said. “Nobody will get a meter of Russian territory.”

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He also lectured a German reporter: “You should have no illusions that after you have ruined Russia you will be getting raw materials at rock-bottom prices. You are not going to get anything from us.”

Germany should pay World War II reparations to Russia instead of compensating Jews for the Holocaust, Zhirinovsky added, repeating inflammatory remarks he made in a German television interview earlier this week.

“Why are you paying Israel and saving Jews?” he asked the German reporter. “You’re paying every Jew, and how many Russians died? Twenty-six million. You don’t give a damn.

“It was we who destroyed fascism,” Zhirinovsky added. “If it wasn’t for us, there wouldn’t be a single Jew.”

During a disastrous European tour last month, Zhirinovsky was expelled from Bulgaria, denied a visa to Germany and told he would be persona non grata in France.