Russian Savors Ironies of Meeting With Perry at NATO Headquarters

Russia’s Pavel S. Grachev was the perfect host Wednesday as he opened a meeting here with U.S. Defense Secretary William J. Perry. The irony of the situation only seemed to buoy his mood even more.

“It seems strange to me that I’m welcoming you here to this building today,” the Russian defense minister told his American counterpart, smirking at the circumstances. Perry too broke into a grin.

The session over which Grachev was presiding was being held in Conference Room No. 2 at NATO headquarters here, and the sign outside announced “Russia”--for the Russian delegation.

Grachev, a four-star general who made 634 parachute jumps while he was an officer in the former Soviet army, was taking the biggest leap of his career: He was here to sign Russia up for NATO--as a sort of associate member for now.

Moreover, the Russians were not the only military officials from the former East Bloc to rate their own suite at the NATO ministerial meeting here this week. The broad, heavily carpeted concourse that leads to NATO’s main meeting chamber was dotted with the oversized military caps of officers from 18 other onetime Communist countries.

It might have been a meeting of the now-defunct Warsaw Pact, joked a local wag.

The session, which followed a meeting of NATO defense ministers on Tuesday, marked the first meeting of the Partnership for Peace, a kind of auxiliary program that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has set up for former East Bloc countries. And for all of the joking, it was one of those days on which even the most seasoned diplomats and military officers were overcome by the sense that they were witnessing an important piece of history.

“I think everyone is sort of awed by it all,” mused a U.S. officer who has spent his career trying to prepare for a possible confrontation with Soviet forces. “I thought I’d never see this come.”

To be sure, the Russians will not actually join the PfP, as it is becoming known here, until sometime in early June, when Moscow presents its final application at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Istanbul, Turkey.

But Grachev was here this week to present formally Russia’s preliminary proposal for its terms of membership--ending weeks of hot-and-cold statements from Moscow about whether the Kremlin would or would not sign up.

And, to the relief of Western diplomats here, he was unambiguous about reports that the Russians would insist on special conditions: “Absolutely nyet ,” he told reporters at the opening of the session.

A mood of optimism lasted all day Wednesday. After the morning session, the NATO ministers, Grachev and the defense chiefs of the 18 Partnership for Peace member countries posed for what was deliberately dubbed a “family portrait.”

And Ukraine’s defense minister, Vitaly Radetsky, who was scheduled to meet with Perry after the session with Grachev, refused to take offense when the American was late.

“We’ll make up for it tonight,” he said lightheartedly.

The ironies continued into the evening.

After a day of bilateral meetings here in Brussels, Perry and the other ministers flew by helicopter to the Belgian city of Mons for a tour of the new building at the allies’ European headquarters that will serve as a military center for Partnership for Peace countries.

The structure, which was completed in 1990, originally was built as an evacuation center in case Western Europe were invaded by the Soviet Bloc. A chunk of the fallen Berlin Wall now serves as statuary at its entrance.