NEWS ANALYSIS : Yeltsin Shows Hard Edge on Foreign Policy

President Boris N. Yeltsin’s State of the Nation speech on Thursday took a distinctly harder line on foreign policy, promising that Russia will pursue its national interests more vigorously and is prepared to get tough when necessary.

Though the speech was crafted for domestic consumption, its assertive stance signals Moscow’s independence from the West at a time when Russia is suffering from superpower nostalgia and wounded national pride.

In the six weeks since President Clinton met with Yeltsin in Moscow in January, Russia has objected to Eastern European countries being admitted to NATO, launched its own peace-making gambit in Bosnia and shrugged off American outrage over the Ames espionage case.

And on Wednesday, Yeltsin proposed that the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and the United States meet in Moscow to work on a settlement of the Bosnian conflict, a strategy that would draw diplomatic focus away from NATO, to which Russia does not belong.

Yeltsin rarely speaks about foreign policy issues while at home, but in his first address to the new Parliament on Thursday, he said Russia’s foreign policy has in the past been “short on initiative and creativity,” with Russia’s dramatic diplomatic intervention in the Bosnian crisis an exception to this passivity.

“We are fond of saying that Russia is a great country. That is so. But then our foreign policy thinking should match this high standard,” Yeltsin said.

Yeltsin said Russia’s first priority is preventing global war, including a new Cold War. “That is why we fully support strengthening the program of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the latest military technologies,” he said.

But he pointedly added that the principle “is binding on all (nations) and not only on Russia, as some people seem to believe.”

The president vowed to make no more “unilateral concessions,” especially on defense. He stressed the need to help Russian companies and defense contractors market their wares abroad, to take charge of peacekeeping on the territory of the former Soviet Union and to defend ethnic Russians living in the former republics.

Yeltsin also made it clear that Russia will not tolerate being ignored--in Bosnia or elsewhere.

“Russia is not a guest in Europe, but a full participant in the European community, with an interest in its well-being,” he said.

Russian politicians hailed Yeltsin’s speech, and foreign policy analysts said it was “high time” for Russia, preoccupied with its wrenching domestic upheavals, to reassert its international interests.

Since the collapse of the totalitarian system, Russia has neither defined nor asserted its national interests, said Alexander A. Konovalov, a defense expert at Moscow’s U.S.A.-Canada Institute.

“Our foreign policy for some time has been largely based on the declaration of biblical and universal humanitarian values,” Konovalov said. “That’s fine, but every country has its own national interests to pursue, and Russia is no exception.”

Russia’s interests “cannot always coincide with the interests of other major democracies,” Konovalov said. “But that is no tragedy. It’s a normal process.”

Yeltsin’s speech was short on specifics about where Russia’s national interests begin and end.

But his pledge to defend Russians living abroad was a clear message to the Baltic states, where up to 20,000 Russian troops are still stationed, and to Kazakhstan, which also has a large ethnic Russian minority.

The tougher rhetoric seemed to please Parliament and could help defuse the appeal of neo-fascist lawmaker Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, who has accused Yeltsin of groveling to the West.

Nikonov said relations between Washington and Moscow “are already not as warm as they used to be.”

Whether a new chill develops, he said, will depend on how both sides behave in Bosnia, the outcome of the spying case against CIA operations officer Aldrich Hazen Ames, and the willingness of Parliament to ratify such international treaties as START II, a new chemical weapons pact and the NATO-sponsored Partnership for Peace program that Yeltsin has endorsed.

Other analysts said the Kremlin’s more assertive mood does not necessarily mean chilly relations with the United States.

“The West needs a good, strong, assertive government in Russia which will control the country, prevent disintegration and be a pillar of the international community,” said Viktor A. Kremenyuk, deputy director of the U.S.A.-Canada Institute.