Russia’s Neighboring States Pledge to Fight Terrorism

Donning the mantle of regional leader again after a series of illnesses, President Boris N. Yeltsin won pledges from Russia’s neighbors Friday to make common cause against terrorism and announced steps to end three armed conflicts in its former empire.

The accord on terrorism, which calls on police and prosecutors of 12 nations to work together, was a gain for Yeltsin in his battle against separatists in Chechnya, who in recent days have seized a village in southern Russia and a passenger ferry in Turkey.

Yeltsin’s activism at a daylong summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States, and his solo appearance to announce the results, was also meant to boost his image at home as a statesman of renewed good health and to undermine the appeal of Russian Communist slogans for a revived Soviet Union.

Leaders of 11 former Soviet republics once subordinate to Moscow, most of them alarmed by the prospect of a Communist comeback in Russia’s June presidential election, gave Yeltsin a vote of confidence by reelecting him chairman of the commonwealth for a third straight year.

The 64-year-old Russian leader, who has appeared to be running for a new term in the Kremlin but has not yet announced it, told the meeting: “You are not only supporting me; you are pushing me to make a decision.”

Yeltsin’s active role in the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 is bound to be an emotional campaign issue in Russia, where the breakup is blamed for much economic hardship.

The commonwealth, made up of all former Soviet republics except the three Baltic states, has made only tiny strides toward rejoining their economies, mainly because the process is voluntary.

“There are slogans voiced today” for restoration of the Soviet empire, Yeltsin said Friday, “but these are isolated voices. . . . They could provoke discord and violence.

“No one will force the commonwealth states to renounce their political independence, however stridently the Communists may urge it,” he added.

At the same time, Yeltsin expressed frustration that Ukraine, the most populous former Soviet republic after Russia, had again rejected his appeal to join Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus in a free-trade zone that could soon expand to include three Central Asian nations. And Yeltsin’s call Friday for tighter security cooperation to counter an eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization also appears be an elusive goal. Turkmenistan, one opponent of the idea, last month outlawed such military alliances.

Efforts announced by Yeltsin on Friday to end ethnic and tribal conflicts in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan look more promising.

He gave Tajik President Emamali Rakhmonov six months to strike an accord with his Afghan-based foes or risk a pullout of Russian peacekeeping troops. And he helped Georgian leader Eduard A. Shevardnadze win approval of a commonwealth trade embargo against breakaway Abkhazia until its rebels disarm and accept Georgian rule.

Yeltsin also assigned his new foreign minister, Yevgeny M. Primakov, to shuttle between Azerbaijan and Armenia “on a permanent basis” until they end a bloody feud over who rules the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

It was Shevardnadze, whose poor nation is most vulnerable to Russian economic pressure, who nominated Yeltsin to lead the commonwealth for another year, despite two bouts of heart trouble that have forced the Kremlin leader to neglect Moscow’s back yard. Yeltsin was unopposed.