Russia Now Ready to Join NATO Program : Military: Earlier the Kremlin had said a decision was half a year off. Critics object to the lack of special status for the ex-superpower.

In an announcement meant to end mixed signals from the Kremlin, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that Russia plans to go ahead and sign on to NATO’s Partnership for Peace program by the end of this month.

President Boris N. Yeltsin’s spokesman had warned last week that Yeltsin was having second thoughts about joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s loose affiliation designed for former Warsaw Pact members. He said it could take six or seven months for a Russian consensus to be reached on the matter.

But Deputy Foreign Minister Vitaly S. Churkin said Tuesday that the partnership could help “strengthen overall European security.” He said Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev plans to sign an agreement on Russia’s membership April 21 in Brussels. “That will be the date of our joining the program,” Churkin told reporters.

Some Russian objections to the partnership deal appear to remain, stemming in part from Moscow’s concern that it will not enjoy special status in the group despite its superior military might. Russian nationalists have also complained that the partnership is merely a post-Cold War cover for luring all of Moscow’s former Warsaw Pact allies into NATO.

Some military analysts also worry that membership could hamper Russian operations in other former Soviet republics, territory Moscow sees as falling within its own sphere of influence.

But the Kremlin appears to have decided to work from inside the NATO program rather than keeping its distance.

“We have very serious possibilities to influence the system from inside,” said Alexander A. Konovalov, a military analyst at the U.S.A.-Canada Institute in Moscow. “Joining the program, we avoid the military-political isolation which would have been inevitable.”

Konovalov said that Russia’s Security Council and other top bodies have approved the plan to join the Partnership for Peace. But Yeltsin apparently balked after hard-line lawmakers at parliamentary hearings warned that Russia would have to toe NATO’s line.

“Deputies have realized that it is fashionable today to be patriotic,” Konovalov said, bemoaning lawmakers’ refusal to understand the basics of the actual partnership program.

The Partnership for Peace was put together last year to offer a way to foster better military cooperation between the former Soviet Bloc countries--many of which were clamoring for entry into NATO--and the Atlantic Alliance.

Members participate in joint military exercises and share some training and peacekeeping work, but no security guarantees are offered. Six former Soviet republics--Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova and Ukraine--have already joined, along with much of Eastern Europe.

The whole program is still highly makeshift and amorphous. Churkin said that even after Russia joins in principle, it will take six or seven months to work out the conditions of its membership.

Exactly what the basis was for presidential spokesman Vyacheslav V. Kostikov’s statements last Friday about a different six months--time he said was needed to sell the public on the program--remains unclear.

He indicated that growing opposition to joining the program had led Yeltsin to decide he would need a national consensus. “This process may take six to seven months,” Kostikov said.

Kozyrev came out immediately afterward, asserting the agreement will be signed at the end of April--proving if nothing else that the Russian government remains confused and somewhat uncoordinated in its positions.

The final decision must come from Yeltsin himself. But it appears unlikely the Foreign Ministry would contradict him on so basic an issue. Kostikov, on the other hand, is known to voice his own opinions, although, as spokesman, he is supposed to represent the president’s views.

The newspaper Sevodnya (Today) commented that Russian public opinion is actually quite indifferent to the Partnership for Peace program. Deputies may oppose it, but since the Parliament will not have to ratify it, Yeltsin need not change his views to accommodate lawmakers.

Instead, Sevodnya said, the president was probably responding to concern from the military Establishment and critics of the West, like Vladimir P. Lukin, head of the lower house’s Foreign Affairs Committee. They worry that the Partnership for Peace program will hinder Russia’s arms sales and require it to open its military budget to real public scrutiny, the newspaper said.