Yeltsin Travels to Prove His Health

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin launched an ambitious preelection campaign of diplomacy here Monday, rattling his saber against NATO expansion and brushing off worries about rebirth of the Soviet Union.

His two-day state visit to Norway, the sole NATO country sharing a border with Russia, is long on ceremony and likely to be the least taxing of trips packing Yeltsin’s schedule as he tries to strike a robust pose ahead of the June 16 presidential election.

But the incumbent’s plodding gait and wan complexion only hours into the first of many foreign visits disclosed fatigue that could undermine his strategy of impressing voters with a dynamic, globe-trotting image.

As he moved woodenly through the pomp and pageantry of his Oslo itinerary, the 65-year-old Yeltsin looked little like the brash democratic crusader who came to power five years ago.

In his uphill struggle for a second term, Yeltsin may be running as much against his eroding stamina as against the Communist Party contender, 51-year-old Gennady A. Zyuganov.

“For a guy who has had two heart attacks recently, he’s certainly got a lot on his agenda,” one Moscow-based diplomat observed of Yeltsin’s plans for this twice-delayed state visit, then trips next month to Ukraine, Kazakhstan and China.

Between sojourns, Yeltsin has promised to bring peace to rebel Chechnya and to host a Group of Seven summit on nuclear security in mid-April.

The image-enhancing diplomatic endeavors also will demand more than a physical price. Yeltsin must resolve territorial disputes with both Ukraine and China ahead of those visits, and even the prestigious meetings with Norway’s royal family were overshadowed by the dilemma of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s plans for expansion and the threatened restoration of the Soviet Union.

“We will discuss why NATO is pushing to the east and with what aims,” Yeltsin said of his talks today with Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland.

While repeating his opposition to membership for countries of the defunct Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union, he suggested that Moscow might accept “the French example” in which a government could participate in the political structures but not its military actions.

(France withdrew from NATO’s integrated military structure in 1966 in an assertion of independence, but Paris resumed active participation late last year, putting French troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina under NATO command.)

On another controversial subject in the former Soviet neighborhood, Yeltsin made clear before his departure from Moscow that a proposed union of Russia and Belarus in no way signals resurrection of the Soviet Union.

Yeltsin and Belarussian President Alexander G. Lukashenko announced Saturday that their countries will intensify political and economic integration. Lukashenko later described the pact as virtual reunification, prompting protests in his own country and correction by Yeltsin.

“Somebody has got things mixed up,” Yeltsin told reporters as he headed for Norway.

Pressure for closer ties among the 15 former Soviet republics has become a hot election topic, as Zyuganov and the Communists have tapped Russian nostalgia for the old superpower with the lower house of parliament’s symbolic vote to annul the 1991 accord that dissolved the Soviet Union.

That issue and general dismay among Russians over economic hardships compel Yeltsin to look abroad to score political points, despite the risks to his health.

Yeltsin suffered mild heart attacks in July and October, the latter only two days after returning from a U.S. visit.

Although he made one-day trips to France and Egypt this year without incident, the next month stretches out like a diplomatic minefield for a president who has suffered embarrassment on the road.

Reports of alcohol abuse were rampant after Yeltsin clowned with an orchestra during a visit to Berlin in September 1994 and when he failed to get off the plane at Shannon airport to meet Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds three weeks later. Early last year, Yeltsin stumbled and slurred during a visit to Almaty, the Kazakh capital, and he ranted against Chechen rebels during a photo session with President Clinton in Canada in June.