Yeltsin Vows to Stop NATO Growth, Fire Pro-West Aide : Russia: Leader underscores ‘cooling-off period’ in East-West relations as summit with Clinton draws near.

President Boris N. Yeltsin talked tough Thursday as he prepared for next week’s U.S.-Russian summit, offering menacing words on relations with NATO countries and disclosing that he wants to fire his pro-Western foreign minister.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Los Angeles Times and four other members of the U.S. media, Yeltsin acknowledged that a “cooling-off period” has beset ties between the United States and Russia after a phase of euphoria over the Cold War’s demise.

Yeltsin vowed to “prevent” expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into Eastern Europe, and he rejected Western proposals for a Balkan peacekeeping force that would place Russian troops under the command of the U.S.-led alliance.

Equally defiant on the domestic front, the 64-year-old president hinted that he might outlaw the reinvigorated and largely reformed Russian Communist Party that has gained broad support in the disgruntled heartland and could emerge on top in December parliamentary elections.

But it was Yeltsin’s observation that he intends to fire Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev that most clearly illustrated his increasing disaffection with Western powers, especially the United States.

Kozyrev, the longest-serving figure in Yeltsin’s Cabinet, has been the target of vicious criticism by the Communists and nationalists who now dominate the Duma, Russia’s lower house of Parliament. Last month, the Duma voted to demand Kozyrev’s ouster.

“I am still dissatisfied” with the course of Russian diplomacy and Kozyrev’s contentious relations with other government officials, Yeltsin said in Thursday’s interview in the Kremlin’s opulent Yekaterininsky Hall.

He described Kozyrev as “exhausted and almost unable to cope.” He said no final decision had been made about the position because it will take time to choose a successor.

In Kremlin vernacular, Yeltsin’s words were tantamount to the dismissal of his top diplomat.

Yeltsin indicated that he would probably handle foreign policy himself in the future.

“Overall coordination of foreign activities has to be the responsibility of the president, no matter how difficult it is for him to take on the extra burden,” Yeltsin said. “Then everyone would be heeding and carrying out a single policy.”

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Soft-spoken, congenial and fluent in English, French and Spanish, Kozyrev has presented the gentler face of post-Soviet Russia to the rest of the world throughout his five years as foreign minister.

But as nationalist and anti-Western sentiments have flared in Russia over NATO bombings in Bosnia-Herzegovina, expansion of the alliance and Moscow’s desire to sell nuclear know-how to Iran, that pro-Western image has made him a convenient scapegoat.

Yeltsin expressed confidence that his good relations with President Clinton will lead to an easing of tensions that have sharpened between their two countries. But his scattershot criticism of U.S. foreign policy appeared to suggest that his meetings with Clinton at the United Nations next week will be marred by contention.

He reiterated Russia’s intention to carry out the sale of more than $1 billion in nuclear reactor technology to Iran despite strong U.S. objections, which he attributed to unscrupulous U.S. efforts to control lucrative trade.

“They don’t want us to win a greater share of the world markets in technology and weapons,” Yeltsin said of U.S. competitors. “This is the main reason they are against this deal with Iran that could earn us billions of dollars.”

The president even hit out at the United States when asked what he was doing to discourage official corruption in his own country. Yeltsin said he would hardly list Russia ahead of most Western states, and that mafia networks have stronger roots in the United States, “where they have had great freedom in trading and deceiving people and engaging in acts of hooliganism.”

Yeltsin’s hardened line against the West was apparent in his defiant warnings about the risks of NATO expansion and the insistence of U.S. military brass that a proposed multinational peacekeeping force for Bosnia be placed solely under NATO command.

The president said Russia could ill afford to foot the estimated $3-billion annual tab for the troops it proposes to deploy with NATO forces to police a Bosnian peace plan, should one emerge from negotiations resuming later this month. But he described the command question as the most important and NATO’s position impossible to accommodate.

Yeltsin took an uncompromising stance toward plans for NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, warning that “we will not allow this.”

He said the Kremlin would take action “of a preventive nature” but was vague as to whether he had military or political measures in mind.

“We have passed through hot war, then cold war, then into partnership, and to lose this partnership of Russia and the United States is impermissible,” he said, suggesting that NATO expansion will jeopardize the superpower relationship.

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Yeltsin, who seemed fatigued at times during the 75-minute talk, appeared simultaneously aggressive and aggrieved in his attitude toward Washington, reflecting Russia’s newfound surliness with Western powers in the wake of the Balkan crisis. Russian politicians across the spectrum have vehemently opposed NATO bombing raids against the Bosnian Serbs, with whom they share a Slavic heritage and the Christian Orthodox faith.

A commentary in this week’s Moscow News accused the U.S. government of a “transition to a policy of ignoring Russia.”

Yeltsin answered questions about the soaring popularity of neo-Communists here by noting that they had to be fought with all force.

He lumped the former ruling party together with ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky in saying extremist parties that posed a threat to the future of Russia’s fledgling democracy could be disbanded.

Yeltsin was to depart for a one-day visit to France today, then fly to New York for 50th anniversary celebrations at the United Nations, where he will meet with Clinton and other world leaders.