Christopher Ties U.S. Aid to End of Chechen War : Diplomacy: Secretary of state says Yeltsin must also mend fences with reformers--or Russia will get less help from Washington.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher, escalating U.S. pressure on the Kremlin, warned Saturday that economic aid to Russia is sure to be slashed if President Boris N. Yeltsin does not stop the bloodshed in Chechnya soon and repair his tattered relationship with democratic reformers.

Christopher said he will tell Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev when they meet in Geneva this week that Congress is certain to curtail or even eliminate aid to Russia unless the fighting ends quickly.

“We’ll have a good talk about this (U.S. aid), and I’m sure he will read what I say as an indication as to the attitude of the United States,” Christopher said in an interview broadcast on CNN’s “Evans & Novak” program. But the secretary of state suggested that Kozyrev, who follows U.S. news media reports, already knows that Russia “is paying a very heavy price” for its military offensive.

Christopher’s comments marked a step up in Administration criticism of Yeltsin and the Russian military, which has launched a costly campaign to prevent the Chechen Republic from seceding from the Russian Federation. President Clinton on Friday attacked Russian military tactics but reaffirmed U.S. support for Russian democracy. He pointedly avoided using Yeltsin’s name.

In the interview broadcast Saturday, Christopher said Washington believes that Yeltsin is in charge of the Chechen situation, although some of his orders to the military have been ignored. It is time for the Russian president to take whatever measures are necessary to stop the violence, Christopher said, because failure to do so could destroy Russia’s experiment with democracy and free-market economics.

“It’s a real setback for democratization and reform in Russia,” Christopher said.

Most of the leaders of Russia’s democratically oriented political parties, such as former Deputy Prime Minister Yegor T. Gaidar, have broken with Yeltsin because of the war. Christopher said the breach could do irreparable damage to Russia unless it is healed quickly.

“When this tragic event is over . . . it’s going to be very important for Russia that Yeltsin try to reassemble this coalition of liberals . . . of individuals who are supporting reform,” Christopher said.

Christopher is scheduled to leave Monday evening for Geneva and to meet there with Kozyrev on Tuesday and Wednesday. The meeting originally was viewed as a way to ease Russian tension over a U.S.-backed plan to open membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to at least some of the East European members of the defunct Warsaw Pact. But the war in the Caucasus Mountains now is sure to dominate the talks.

Yeltsin warned Clinton last month during a European summit in Budapest, Hungary, that NATO expansion would produce a “cold peace” if it resulted in an alliance of former Soviet satellites encircling Russia. At that time, Yeltsin accused the United States of trying to dominate world politics.

Despite growing Washington-Moscow friction, the United States muffled its criticism of the Chechnya conflict for weeks because it did not wish to destabilize Russia and because it agrees with the Kremlin that the disputed region is part of Russia.

On Wednesday, however, the Administration accused Russia of violating the standards of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, of which Russia is a member. Unlike most aspects of international law, the OSCE guidelines apply to the internal affairs of member states, not just to their foreign policy.

Asked if the United States plans additional action to enforce the OSCE regulations, Christopher said Russia is already “paying a very heavy price in world opinion” for its “violation of a political commitment” to avoid the use of excessive military force.

Nevertheless, Christopher reiterated that the United States objects only to the methods Yeltsin has employed in trying to keep Chechnya in the Russian Federation. He said it is in the best interests of both the United States and Russia to keep the federation from fracturing along ethnic lines.

“There are 89 republics within the Russian Federation,” Christopher said. “If they were to begin to break up, if each one of those could split off if it wanted to, we’d really have the disintegration of Russia, and we would have a very serious problem with the 25,000 nuclear missiles” deployed across the nation.

On a more personal topic, Christopher, who once complained that Washington is a cruel town where working conditions are difficult and frustrating, said he is now content in his job.

Referring to a meeting with Clinton late last year, Christopher said: “We had a good talk, and we talked about where we’d been in foreign policy and where we were going. He asked me to stay on indefinitely, and I said yes.

“There’s a very important agenda,” he said. “I like what I’m doing. I’m enjoying what I’m doing. There’s a lot of things I want to accomplish.”