Amid Hawkish Mood at Kremlin, Yeltsin Fires His Foreign Minister

The long humiliation of Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev culminated Friday in a presidential decree announcing his dismissal and fresh slights against the diplomat who once personified the democratic promise of a new Russia.

President Boris N. Yeltsin’s decision to sack his longest-serving Cabinet minister underscored a hawkish trend that has pervaded Kremlin relations with the West as Russians’ commitment to reform weakens from a protracted and painful transition.

The decree from Yeltsin announced Kozyrev’s resignation without the customary notation that the action was at the minister’s request, and it contained no words of praise or thanks for more than two decades of diplomatic service.

A gregarious polyglot who was more popular abroad than in his own country, Kozyrev had increasingly become Yeltsin’s scapegoat for diplomatic failures and a magnet for nationalist accusations that the country was becoming subordinate to Cold War-era adversaries.

No replacement has been named for the top diplomatic job, and presidential spokesman Sergei K. Medvedev suggested that the search for a successor may take some time because “the president understands that this is a key position.”

But Yeltsin diluted the influence of the Foreign Ministry last week by announcing that he was taking over responsibility for foreign affairs with the creation of a presidential Foreign Policy Council.

The Interfax news agency announced that Kozyrev’s long-expected departure was prompted by his election last month to the Duma, or lower house of parliament. Russian law forbids simultaneous service in the executive and legislative branches.

But the quasi-official Itar-Tass news agency cast Kozyrev’s departure as a “dismissal,” and Medvedev made clear that the 44-year-old foreign minister had been fired.

“Boris Nikolayevich [Yeltsin] has consistently criticized the foreign ministry and Minister Kozyrev for mistakes and a lack of coordination,” Medvedev said. “Today’s decree is the logical result of this criticism.”

Yeltsin lashed out at the work of the Foreign Ministry during a news conference in September, then told a group of American journalists a month later that he was looking for a replacement.

Despite that public denigration, Kozyrev remained in office, doggedly following the presidential entourage to Washington for an October summit with President Clinton.

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In Washington, the Clinton administration insisted that it was not worried about the shift and said it expects Russia’s foreign policy to remain unchanged, at least as long as Yeltsin remains in office.

U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher issued a statement praising Kozyrev as “a skilled diplomat and a determined advocate of Russian interests” who had helped build a closer relationship between Russia and the United States.

Even so, it was plain that at least some senior officials were wary about who might replace Kozyrev as foreign minister.

U.S. officials apparently had little warning about Friday’s announcement. Christopher said he had learned of the resignation early in the day.

Kozyrev, who was vacationing outside Moscow and maintaining a low profile, had been under attack by Russian nationalists for more than three years.

Duma deputies demanded Kozyrev’s sacking last summer, blaming him for Russia’s failure to deter NATO bombing raids against Serbian allies in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The air strikes eventually forced an end to the Serbian siege of Sarajevo and fostered a peace accord, but the attacks played into the hands of nationalists who cast the bombing campaign as U.S.-led aggression against Russia’s Slav allies.

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Although Kozyrev was reported to have had no role in the Kremlin decision to attack secessionist Chechnya in December 1994, he has been held accountable by political compatriots for the international uproar over the conflict that has taken an estimated 20,000 lives.

With his dismissal, Kozyrev becomes the first casualty of a government shake-up promised by Yeltsin after Dec. 17 parliamentary elections, in which Communists and nationalists gained ground against democrats.

Ultranationalist firebrand Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky appealed to Yeltsin to recognize his party’s second-place showing in the elections by appointing him to replace Kozyrev--a proposal destined to be rejected.