Clinton Promises U.S. Help to Unite Europe : Diplomacy: ‘We must not now let the Iron Curtain be replaced with a veil of indifference,’ the President says. He warns that allied aid for former East Bloc satellites must come quickly.

President Clinton, on his first visit to Europe since entering the White House almost a year ago, presented his new vision for the Western Alliance in the post-Cold War era Sunday, pledging renewed American leadership and commitment to unite this economically and politically troubled continent.

But he warned that the allies must reach out quickly to help the nations of the former Soviet empire or risk seeing those countries’ precarious democracies overwhelmed by “the grim pretenders to tyranny’s dark throne”--the ultranationalists who have shown alarming strength across Russia and parts of Eastern Europe.

If America and Western Europe work as hard now to unite with their former adversaries as they did to contain communism, then the 21st Century can be the “most exciting period that Europe and the United States have ever known,” Clinton said, speaking in the medieval town hall of this NATO headquarters city on the eve of his summit with allied heads of state.

Integrating the struggling former Communist Bloc countries with the rest of Europe will be difficult, Clinton acknowledged, especially at a time when European countries are experiencing economic difficulties of their own, but he cautioned that the opportunity to do so may be fleeting.

“We must not now let the Iron Curtain be replaced with a veil of indifference,” he said. “For history will judge us as it judged with scorn those who preached isolationism between the world wars, and as it has judged with praise the bold architects of the transatlantic community after World War II.”

Clinton will formally outline his “Partnership for Peace” plan when the summit officially begins today.

The plan is designed to balance concern in Europe and the United States about responding too quickly to East European requests for NATO membership against worries that excluding the former satellites could come back to haunt the West if Russian nationalism should once again rear its head.

The Partnership for Peace would open the door to political, military and economic cooperation with all of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s former adversaries, including Russia, Ukraine and the other newly independent states of the old Soviet Union.

In another development here, a senior Clinton aide said the United States is “damn close” to reaching an agreement with Ukraine to destroy its massive nuclear arsenal in return for a multibillion-dollar aid package for the collapsing Ukrainian economy.

There were reports that the aid package might be as high as $12 billion--much of it in the form of payment for enriched uranium removed from the warheads for use in nuclear power plants.

Clinton plans to visit Moscow on Thursday and Friday for a summit with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.

Another senior Clinton Administration official said that if the deal with Ukraine is completed before the Moscow visit ends, Clinton will go to Kiev to sign the agreement.

Ukraine has 175 intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with more than 1,000 nuclear warheads, and the United States has been working feverishly to reach an agreement to ensure their dismantlement.

Washington and its allies have considered the missiles a major threat.

The President’s speech, a preview of the NATO summit agenda, was delivered in the Gothic Room of the 15th-Century Hotel de Ville, the town hall, before an audience of 275 well-groomed young Europeans, many of them students from the College of Europe here. They listened attentively and applauded warmly at the end of the talk.

Clinton, who attended his mother’s funeral in Hot Springs, Ark., on Saturday before leaving for Brussels, appeared solemn, and at times his eyes were rimmed with red as he went through a busy first day here.

His schedule before the evening speech, which had been billed as a major effort to reassure Europe of America’s commitment to the alliance, included meetings with King Albert II and Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene, as well as a talk to the American Embassy staff.

Although Clinton spoke in sober and measured tones to his young audience, described by his hosts as “future leaders of Europe,” the 47-year-old President drew scattered laughter when--in an oblique reference to his fondness for playing the saxophone--he said, “For those of you who know anything about me personally, I . . . have a great personal debt of nearly 40 years’ standing to this country because it was a Belgian, Adolphe Sax, who invented the saxophone.”

Seeking to allay the concerns of European leaders who have felt that under Clinton the United States was shifting its focus from Europe to the Pacific Rim, the President said he had come to Brussels to demonstrate that Europe “remains central to the interests of the United States, and that we will work with our partners in seizing the opportunities before us all.”

While the United States must continue to reach out to both Asia and Latin America, he said Europe remains “our most valued partner, not just in the cause of democracy and freedom, but also in the economics of trade and investment.”

Above all, the core of U.S. security remains with Europe, he said, and thus he is committed to keeping about 100,000 troops stationed in Europe, consistent with the desire of the allies.

Despite the end of the Cold War, he said, the continuing bloodshed in Bosnia-Herzegovina serves as a reminder that strong military forces remain necessary.

Meanwhile, a senior Administration official said that despite pressure from France and some other countries for immediate NATO air strikes against the Serbian aggressors in Bosnia’s war, no such action is imminent.

Although some critics have argued that there no longer is a military mission for NATO, Clinton declared that his Partnership for Peace plan will not alter NATO’s fundamental mission of defending its 16 member countries from armed attack.

Clinton did not mention Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, the fiery leader of Russia’s ultranationalist right, by name, but he clearly had him in mind in declaring that “we cannot afford to abandon that mission while the dream of empire still burns in the minds of some who look longingly toward a brutal past.”

At the same time, Clinton made it clear that he would like to stick to his plan of providing for gradual admission of such countries as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to NATO rather than run the risk of undermining Yeltsin by drawing “a new line between East and West that could create a self-fulfilling prophecy of future confrontation.”

Some Eastern European countries have pressed for early NATO membership, but Yeltsin signaled to Clinton that this would isolate Russia and give it potential enemy status.

As a compromise, according to senior U.S. officials, an early draft of the summit’s final communique declares that NATO would “expect and welcome” the alliance’s expansion to include East European countries, but sets out no time schedule for their inclusion.

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The President’s Itinerary

President Clinton’s nine-day trip, his first to Europe since being elected, will take him across Western and Central Europe to Russia. His most urgent purpose: shoring up an alliance increasingly worried about resurgent fascism. Among the highlights of the trip:

1. Sunday, Brussels: Meets with prime minister; major speech on U.S.-European relations

Today: Briefing by U.S. Military Command; NATO summit opening session; private working sessions all day

Tuesday: Addresses representatives of American business community; final NATO session

2. Wednesday, Prague: Visits old Jewish cemetery; meetings with leaders of Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland

3. Thursday, Moscow: Official Kremlin welcome; meetings with Boris N. Yeltsin; private dinner with Yeltsin at his dacha outside Moscow

Friday: Further meetings with Yeltsin; joint news conference; speech and question period on Russian television; state dinner at the Kremlin

4. Saturday, Minsk: Meetings with Belarus leaders

5. Sunday, Geneva: Meets with President Hafez Assad of Syria; flies home

NATO SUMMIT Players

The leaders of the 16 NATO nations participating in the two-day NATO summit that begins today in Brussels:

* Belgium: Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene, Foreign Minister Willy Claes

* Britain: Prime Minister John Major, Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd

* Canada: Prime Minister Jean Chretien, Foreign Minister Andre Ouellet

* Denmark: Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen

* France: President Francois Mitterrand, Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, Foreign Minister Alain Juppe

* Germany: Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel

* Greece: Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, Foreign Minister Karolos Papoulias

* Iceland: Prime Minister David Oddsson, Foreign Minister Jon Baldvin Hannibalsson

* Italy: Prime Minister Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Foreign Minister Beniamino Andreatta

* Luxembourg: Prime Minister Jacques Santer, Foreign Minister Jacques Poos

* Netherlands: Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers, Foreign Minister Pieter Kooijmans

* Norway: Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, Deputy Foreign Minister Siri Bjerke

* Portugal: Prime Minister Anibal Cavaco Silva, Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso

* Spain: Prime Minister Felipe Gonalez, Foreign Minister Javier Solana Madariaga

* Turkey: Prime Minister Tansu Ciller, Foreign Minister Hikmet Cetin

* United States: President Clinton, Secretary of State Warren Christopher

* NATO: Secretary General Manfred Woerner

SOURCE: Times wire reports