Talbott Flap: A Tempest in a Teapot? : Government: Clinton friend’s confirmation as deputy secretary of state is in no real danger. But some sticky questions may be asked at the hearing.

When President Clinton chose his old Oxford roommate, former Time magazine correspondent Strobe Talbott, to be the State Department’s No. 2 official, it was not supposed to be a controversial appointment.

“An inspired choice,” glowed House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.). “A gifted strategic thinker,” said Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who saw Talbott as a secret weapon to turn Clinton’s attention to foreign policy.

Indeed, Talbott was credited with playing a large part in two of the Administration’s success stories: its aid program for Russia and its agreement to eliminate nuclear weapons from Ukraine. Some officials even spoke of him as a future secretary of state.

But now, as the Senate prepares to debate Talbott’s nomination this week, Clinton’s old friend suddenly has become a lightning rod for criticism. A growing list of detractors is hurling a variety of charges Talbott’s way: that he failed to save reform in Russia, that he harbors harshly anti-Israel views, even that he was to blame for Clinton’s abortive nomination of Bobby Ray Inman as secretary of defense.

“He’s been giving the President very bad advice,” complained Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a leading conservative spokesman on foreign policy. “He doesn’t have the qualifications for the job.”

Talbott’s confirmation as deputy secretary of state is in no real danger. “He’ll be confirmed overwhelmingly,” acknowledged McCain, who is leading the opposition to the nomination.

Instead, the tempest over Talbott is one part foreign policy debate, largely over Clinton’s policy of unreserved support for Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin; one part political sparring, as Republicans probe to see whether Clinton is vulnerable to charges of foreign policy failure, and one part Washington ordeal, as interest groups and congressional players sink their teeth into every key nominee.

In Talbott’s case, the stakes are high because of the widespread belief that, as one of Clinton’s closest confidants, he may be the most powerful deputy secretary of state in memory--and a possible successor to Christopher.

And it represents the opening salvo in a debate over Clinton’s foreign policy performance, launched by Republicans such as McCain who hope to make it an issue in the 1996 campaign.

State Department spokesman Mike McCurry dismissed the complaints. “A majority of the Senate has already . . . greeted this nomination very favorably,” he said Friday. Talbott has refused to reply publicly to his critics.

Still, he will clearly face some stiff questions from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when it considers his nomination Tuesday.

One focus of controversy is Russia, a subject on which Talbott made his name in both journalism and diplomacy. Last year, he successfully launched a massive U.S. aid program and marshaled support for Yeltsin. But last month, his policies suffered a serious setback when Moscow’s leading economic reformers resigned. One, former Finance Minister Boris G. Fyodorov, even accused Talbott of delivering “a stab in the back” by saying that the United States would accept a slower pace of reform--or, as Talbott put it, “less shock and more therapy.”

A second controversy arose last week over several of Talbott’s columns in Time on the Middle East during the 1980s. The leader of a conservative Jewish organization, Morton A. Klein, circulated a collection of excerpts from the columns and charged Talbott with “unbelievable hostility.”

Some of Talbott’s columns were, indeed, critical of Israel--mostly of Israel’s hard-line Likud government in the 1980s. One, written during the Persian Gulf War, bore the incendiary headline, “How Israel Is Like Iraq.” The column itself said, “In most respects, the comparison is as invalid as it is invidious.” But it argued that Likud’s goal of annexing the occupied West Bank was an obstacle to peace just as Iraq’s attempt to annex Kuwait was.

That alarmed the leaders of many Jewish groups, and on Thursday, Lester Pollack, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, met with Talbott for 90 minutes. In a written statement, Pollack said that Talbott “indicated his unqualified support for the Clinton Administration’s policies . . . (of) support of Israel.” But Pollack was not fully reassured, another Jewish official said.

McCurry said that the State Department had no qualms about Talbott’s columns. “His role as a journalist and as a commentator was to be provocative and to be thoughtful. His role as a government official is to execute the policy of the United States government. And those are two different things,” he said.