NATO Ministers Agree to Expand Membership : Military: Move to admit former East Bloc nations could put more pressure on alliance. Russia protests.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization foreign ministers agreed on a plan Thursday to expand membership to the East, a step that drew a sharp protest from Russia and could produce new splits in the 45-year-old alliance.

With remarkably little opposition for such a potentially controversial measure, the NATO ministers approved a U.S. plan calling for a yearlong debate over conditions for membership prior to admitting the first new members, probably sometime in 1996.

“The United States has a comprehensive strategy in Europe, and today we set about implementing that strategy,” Secretary of State Warren Christopher said after the meeting of foreign ministers of the 16-nation alliance.

In a joint communique, NATO said it was premature to begin selecting new members or even to set a firm timetable for ultimate expansion.

But the alliance agreed to fix the requirements for membership and to discuss those provisions with each of the 24 nations that are now members of the loose Partnership for Peace organization. The communique said a study on the issues will be completed by next December.

Christopher said that applicants for NATO membership must be members of the partnership, a year-old organization including all but two of the former republics of the Soviet Union plus previously neutral Sweden and Finland. The two former Soviet republics that have not joined are Belarus and Tajikistan.

Washington wants to make the partnership a permanent organization to provide a link between NATO and the Central and Eastern European nations that fail to qualify for full membership.

But Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev immediately dashed cold water on the U.S. victory.

He complained that NATO is moving much too fast in opening membership to Moscow’s Cold War allies. He said it is “difficult to understand” why NATO would establish a procedure that might produce new members by the end of next year.

Kozyrev refused to go through with a long-planned NATO-Moscow agreement on future military cooperation. He said his government “needs some time to clarify” NATO’s intentions.

U.S. and European officials said they are optimistic that the Russian foreign minister will sign the agreement eventually. A NATO official dismissed his action as “a piece of theater.” And a U.S. official said it appeared to be aimed at “domestic politics” in Russia.

Although no conditions were outlined in the communique, State Department spokesman Mike McCurry said Washington is determined to limit membership to countries with democratic governments, a provision that would rule out many potential members, especially former Soviet republics in Central Asia.

Russia presumably could qualify, but Moscow opposes NATO expansion out of hand. Russian officials say the country does not want to join and objects to any expansion that would isolate and encircle Russia by admitting former members of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact.

Kozyrev complained that “the NATO communique raises more questions than it answers.”

After meeting for an hour with Christopher and other NATO ministers, Kozyrev said he had been “greatly reassured.” But he still refused to sign.

McCurry said Kozyrev’s action came as a surprise, because the U.S. government had briefed Russia on its plan for NATO expansion.

A German official said Kozyrev may have been “trying to take advantage of the mood” of European allies already nervous about expansion.

Despite the communique’s enthusiastic language on expansion, it is no secret that several European allies are worried.

Some members, such as Spain and Italy, are said to be concerned that extending alliance guarantees to Central and East European nations could distract NATO from existing commitments in the Mediterranean region.

Others are unsettled by the Clinton Administration’s desire to move quickly on the expansion issue, fearing that it could alarm Russia and cause additional tensions within an alliance that has recently experienced severe strain over its inability to stop the bloody ethnic war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

NATO Secretary General Willy Claes admitted at a news conference that the alliance is facing severe strains over the crisis in Bosnia. But he said the agreement on expansion shows that the alliance is able to make decisions on matters beyond the Balkan conflict.

“NATO has been through difficult times before,” Claes said. “It has always bounced back. This is what we have done today.”

Claes, Christopher and most of the foreign ministers repeated: “The Bosnia crisis is about Bosnia and not about NATO and its future.”

Claes, a former Belgian foreign minister, said he knows of no country willing to commit the hundreds of thousands of troops that would be required to force the warring factions in Bosnia to make peace. He said NATO will continue to use its warplanes in the Balkans when requested to do so by the United Nations command, but he said the Atlantic Alliance will not expand its role or act without U.N. approval.

He conceded that the U.N.-NATO relationship has been a frustrating one for the alliance’s air arm, which, unlike the U.N. ground force, includes American units.

In his news conference, Christopher dismissed as “quite hypothetical” a question about whether Washington would contribute ground troops to help evacuate U.N. forces from Bosnia should that step be needed. The secretary of state said President Clinton has not yet decided on the precise American role in any evacuation, although he said the United States will participate in some way.

On Wednesday, U.S. officials in Washington said the Clinton Administration had agreed in principle to send U.S. troops to help evacuate the peacekeepers.

Although the decision on NATO expansion deflected attention from Bosnia, it also highlighted other splits within the alliance.

Even Germany, once Europe’s biggest cheerleader for a rapid expansion, now advocates a more measured pace, in part because it fears provoking Russia.

In a confidential telegram to Bonn 10 days ago, Germany’s permanent representative to NATO, Hermann von Richthofen, accused the United States of unilaterally pushing the issue of rapid expansion in a way that could cause even deeper rifts within the alliance.

Portions of the telegram published in Thursday’s editions of the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung quoted Von Richthofen, a grandson of the World War I flying ace known as the Red Baron, as claiming that Washington was moving ahead on the expansion issue “without consulting on fundamental questions tied to the policy.”

“It almost seems as if it’s boiled down to a single alternative--to present a new NATO to the United States or to barely be able to keep the alliance together,” he complained.

Speaking to reporters, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said any NATO expansion should be approved by both the European Union and the organization that will eventually become NATO’s defense arm, the West European Union.