Russia Plans Alternative to West’s Peace Partnership

Russia will develop an alternative to the Partnership for Peace program and offer its proposal at a meeting of NATO and other European defense ministers in Brussels on May 24, Defense Minister Pavel S. Grachev said Friday.

Grachev suggested a new Asian-Pacific collective security agreement, with Russia acting as a bridge between Europe and Asia, but he offered no details.

The latest Russian initiative could create a diplomatic headache for the United States, which has sought to soothe wounded nationalist Russian pride, while discouraging Russia from free-lance diplomacy in the Middle East, Bosnia-Herzegovina and other strategic hot spots.

Despite these efforts, anti-Western and especially anti-American sentiment here is rising, fueled by indignation over the NATO bombing of Bosnian Serb positions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and charges, repeated Friday by Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, that the West is closed to Russian products.

“They smile at us broadly and nicely, but when it comes to actions, thousands of reasons are found to bar us from Western markets,” Chernomyrdin said in an interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta, a government newspaper.

Grachev’s comments, which went beyond previous Russian official statements rejecting the Partnership for Peace plan, were equally acid.

He said the “infamous” NATO-sponsored military-cooperation program--which Russia promised to join, then rejected last month--is unacceptable. NATO should not be permitted to throw its military weight around or usurp the Council for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in peacekeeping operations, he added.

Grachev said he objects even to the name “Partnership for Peace.”

“We cannot possibly create a Partnership for War, can we?” he asked.

Later, apparently referring to North Atlantic Treaty Organization actions in Bosnia, Grachev added: “When they say one thing and do another, is it a real partnership?”

NATO officials saw Grachev’s statements as more Russian posturing intended to secure a status-enhancing “special role” for Russia in a program that 15 non-NATO countries--including almost all of the former Soviet satellites--have already joined.

One official who declined to be named said NATO had received assurances last week that Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev would sign the Partnership for Peace agreement “in the near future.” Kozyrev said publicly last month that Russia would not sign.

But a key Russian lawmaker called that view “wishful thinking.” Most of the Russian public--and the Parliament--continues to hold a demonized view of NATO, a holdover from decades of Soviet slogans that depicted the alliance as the military arm of the Imperialist West, lawmaker Vyacheslav Nikonov said.

“I think it’s a mistake not to sign,” Nikonov said. The Partnership for Peace program is so cosmetic that Russia loses little by signing--but would risk isolation if it refuses, he said.

The Partnership for Peace consists of two parts: a general agreement to cooperate with NATO in principle, which NATO officials say cannot be altered for Russia, and a specific agreement that lays out the ways in which each nation wants to cooperate. The latter could be broadly worded to give Russia a role commensurate with its status as the biggest military power in the region and include issues--such as curbing terrorism and nuclear proliferation--on which Russia and the West are already cooperating, U.S. and NATO officials have said.

But NATO will continue to spurn Russian hints about wanting to be present when NATO debates and votes on important issues.

Efron reported from Moscow and Marshall from Brussels.