Clinton to Make Quick Stop at European Summit : Diplomacy: President will spend only six hours at two-day security conference. That reflects U.S. ambivalence about its role in Continent’s future.

With the bloodiest European war in almost half a century raging nearby and America’s post-Cold War relationship with Russia turning a bit chilly, President Clinton will swoop in here today to reassert a U.S. role in Europe’s future.

But Clinton plans to spend just six hours at the two-day summit of the 53-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, a schedule that is symbolic of Washington’s ambivalence about its place in European affairs.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who arrived in Budapest on Sunday in advance of the President, hopes to turn the CSCE--which includes the United States, Canada and almost every European nation--into a forum capable of heading off ethnic wars like the one in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Most U.S. officials, however, concede that the CSCE, created in the mid-1970s as a Cold War bridge between East and West, has a long way to go before it reaches that goal.

Christopher said Sunday that Washington wants the CSCE to have a military peacekeeping role similar to that of the United Nations’ “blue helmet” forces.

“A strengthened CSCE with some peacekeeping formula under which they would be able to engage the armed forces of various countries can make them effective,” Christopher said.

“The fact that Bosnia has been such a tragedy . . . should not cause us to simply throw up our hands and fail to engage in conflict resolution wherever we can, wherever conflicts arise, and the earlier the better,” he said.

But it is far from clear how a CSCE-established peacekeeping force could be more effective than the U.N. force, which has failed to exert the military muscle needed to force the warring factions in Bosnia to make peace. Unlike the United Nations, where the 15-nation Security Council controls peacekeeping operations, the CSCE operates by consensus, meaning that a single member can veto any activity.

Moreover, the first test of CSCE peacekeeping probably will be an effort to resolve the conflict between the former Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. Other ethnic conflicts in the former Soviet Union are also candidates for CSCE peacekeeping.

But some U.S. officials are concerned that Russia might try to dominate such a force, in effect using the CSCE as a cover for solidifying its influence throughout the former Soviet empire.

Christopher said the Russians should be allowed to contribute something less than half of the troops in any CSCE force. But it is not clear where the rest of the soldiers would come from.

John Kornblum, a top State Department expert on Europe, said that several nations have expressed interest in contributing troops to a CSCE force in Nagorno-Karabakh and other post-Soviet hot spots. But he did not name any of them and said it was unlikely that the United States would participate.

At the same time, Russia is advancing a newly assertive foreign policy that could interfere with U.S. interests, although no one expects the situation to reach Cold War-style tensions.

Last week’s refusal by Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev to participate in a long-scheduled ceremony intended to mark military cooperation between Moscow and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was only the latest and most visible example of U.S.-Russian friction.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin has proposed giving the CSCE authority over all regional security matters and abolishing NATO, the military alliance that the United States considers the anchor of its policy in Europe.

Christopher insisted that there is no realistic danger of the abolition of NATO. He said U.S.-Russian relations remain basically sound, although he admitted: “We’ll always have areas of disagreement. . . . We’ll always have things to talk through and work through together, as two major powers naturally do.”

The CSCE summit, coming on the heels of a contentious meeting of NATO foreign ministers last week in Brussels, underscores the evolving nature of Washington’s relationship with Europe. From the U.S. standpoint, NATO and the CSCE are the key European institutions because they are the only ones in which the United States is a full member.

Nevertheless, Clinton’s short schedule in Budapest has raised some questions about the importance that the United States attaches to the meeting.

Christopher, however, said, “The fact that he is coming at all, and the fact that he is going through schedule contortions to be here, is a reflection of his interest and concern.”

Unlike during the Cold War years, the United States has indicated that it is not willing to routinely take the serious military risks that have been required for NATO leadership.

David P. Calleo, director of European studies at the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University, said it is time for the United States to play a lesser role in NATO and in the defense of Europe generally.

He said Washington should “not pretend to be playing the old role and then not do it. . . . What causes the bad feeling is to talk about playing the old role and not do it.”

The State Department’s Kornblum, a former chief of the U.S. delegation to the CSCE, said the organization gives the United States and other democracies a framework for challenging human rights abuses in other countries.

“The CSCE was the first structure . . . which established that it was internationally acceptable to talk about behavior inside another country,” Kornblum said. “It had been considered to be an absolute taboo. . . . This is very, very innovative.”

BACKGROUND

Created in the mid-1970s as a forum for East-West dialogue, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe includes nearly all European states, the United States and Canada. It started with 35 members, but the collapse of the Soviet Union swelled its ranks. It now comprises 53 nations, although the membership of the rump Yugoslav state has been suspended. The group has no military structure or armed forces of its own but works to ease tensions and help prevent conflicts. It can act only if all members agree, and this principle of consensus has brought charges that it is unwieldy and ineffective. But it is the only security body to include nearly all states in Europe and link them with North America. The CSCE has helped to coordinate the enforcement of U.N. sanctions against the rump Yugoslav state and sent small missions to help ease tensions in the Baltic republics, Tajikistan, Georgia, Moldova, the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia and Ukraine. It is headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic, and a committee of officials meets every week in Vienna to discuss key issues. Summits are held every two years.