Clinton Sales Pitch Aimed at Ukraine Lawmakers : Diplomacy: The President is stopping in Kiev today to drum up support for pact on dismantling of country’s nuclear arms.

Going at the former Soviet Union with the same sales strategy that won approval for the North American Free Trade Agreement, President Clinton is launching a whirlwind campaign to seek support from Ukraine’s truculent Parliament for his deal to get rid of the country’s nuclear weapons.

Beginning with a two-hour stop today at Kiev’s airport to express his newfound admiration for Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk, Clinton and other Administration officials plan to lavish promises of aid and affection on Ukraine as the reward for keeping Kravchuk’s promise of nuclear disarmament.

And where some U.S. officials foresaw trouble in Ukrainian nationalists’ immediate opposition to the agreement, a buoyant Clinton professed to see nothing more than the normal workings of democratic government. Whenever any country’s leader concludes an agreement, there are always critics in the legislative branch, Clinton said in Brussels at the conclusion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit meeting.

“This always happens,” he said at a news conference. “Every decision every executive makes is going to be second-guessed by people of the legislature. It’s almost the way the system’s set up. It shouldn’t surprise anybody.

“When we approved the side agreements to NAFTA, we didn’t know at the time whether everybody in Congress would think it was a wonderful idea,” Clinton noted before flying to Prague, capital of the Czech Republic, for meetings with East European leaders.

The political and economic chaos in Ukraine makes its Parliament, the Rada, a far cry from the U.S. Congress, but Administration officials suggested Clinton will try to win Ukrainians over with the same appeals to self-interest and gain that work in Washington.

Most important for Ukraine, which has been shivering through a winter of heating fuel cutbacks and runaway inflation, the President will hold out the prospect of doubling U.S. economic aid almost immediately, from $155 million to $310 million, officials said.

The concentrated sales pitch is intended to help Kravchuk overcome nationalists’ fierce opposition to the arms deal, under which Ukraine will agree to dismantle more than 1,800 nuclear warheads inherited from the Soviet Union.

Ukrainian politicians of several stripes have already denounced the agreement, but some members of Parliament said the promise of $1 billion worth of nuclear fuel as compensation, along with increased U.S. aid, would swing some votes.

Nevertheless, some U.S. officials said they were dismayed by early objections from powerful members of the Rada.

“That’s one reason we were trying to keep the details of the agreement under wraps--to give Kravchuk a chance to sell it to the Rada first,” a senior official said.

But when it came to timing, the State Department’s desire to help Kravchuk sell the pact appeared to collide with the White House’s desire to trumpet the President’s diplomatic success. On Sunday, White House officials were encouraging reporters to write about the prospect of an agreement at the same time that State Department officials were pleading with them not to.

Clinton believes this agreement is more likely to hold than several similar promises Ukraine made but never kept--largely because of the money involved and Kiev’s desperate need for aid, another White House official said.

Clinton and Kravchuk also plan to discuss several issues that remain unresolved in the agreement, officials said.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that the agreement was still only a draft and needed some work.

“We hope that the trilateral talks in Moscow will end successfully. But if the document is not ready, then the meeting will have a consultative nature,” spokesman Yuri Sergeyev told a news conference in Kiev, according to Reuters.

“If we succeed in achieving agreement and a document is worked out fully, it will be signed. But the form has not been worked out fully,” he said.

Anything less than a firm, concluded agreement would be a severe embarrassment to Clinton, who announced the pact with great fanfare Monday.

A U.S. official insisted that despite the Foreign Ministry statement, Kravchuk has made a commitment to sign Friday. “They presumably don’t want the Rada to feel that they are being informed only after the agreement has been concluded,” he said--though that is, in fact, the case.

At any rate, officials said, there is still plenty of time for politicking over the pact, signed or not.

Ukraine is scheduled to hold parliamentary elections in March, and Kravchuk has told U.S. officials that he plans to submit the entire nuclear question to the new Rada once it is in place, three months or more from now.