Clinton, Yeltsin Will Seek to Shore Up Their Political Flanks

When President Clinton and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin sit down with leaders of the world’s major democracies later this week, the official reason will be for a discussion of Russia’s leak-prone atomic weapons stockpile and nuclear power plants.

The unofficial--and more pressing--motive is the opportunity the encounter provides for two de facto running mates to bond.

The U.S. and Russian presidents will face difficult challenges from their political flanks in the coming months, and any major setbacks in foreign or domestic policy could spell big trouble at the polls for one or both.

As a result, despite all the trappings of big-power summitry, the chief product of this week’s meeting is likely to be Clinton’s photographic and body-language endorsement for a fellow incumbent, who is in an uphill battle against a formidable Communist Party candidate, Gennady A. Zyuganov.

Clinton has invested his prestige and hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid to encourage Russia’s move toward greater democracy. A repudiation of Yeltsin by the Russian people would leave Clinton vulnerable to charges that he has mismanaged the United States’ most important foreign policy account.

Clinton’s near-certain opponent in November, Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), plans to make the U.S. president’s at-times wobbly conduct of foreign policy a major issue in the fall. A Yeltsin defeat--or a lurch to the right by the Russian leader to help ensure his victory--would provide Dole new ammunition to use against Clinton.

For Yeltsin, the potential benefits of a healthy U.S. partnership may be one of the better things he has to offer a citizenry to whom he may seem increasingly feeble, ineffective and disorganized.

Clinton will arrive in Moscow after a brief stop in South Korea and a state visit to Japan. The public message of the Asia visits is the continuing U.S. commitment to the security of the region, which is on edge because of recent Chinese and North Korean provocations.

But Clinton’s meetings with Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto and other Japanese leaders have been scripted with a U.S. domestic constituency in mind, as well--those millions of workers and voters who fear for their jobs and are skeptical of the administration’s free-trade policies.

Franklin L. Lavin, an Asia policy specialist in the Reagan and Bush administrations, said the Japan visit is little more than “one more campaign stop” for Clinton.

“With less than seven months to go until the U.S. elections, concerns over the U.S. constituency will dominate the trip,” Lavin, now executive director of the Asia Pacific Policy Center in Washington, wrote of the summit. “Thus, Clinton’s key goal for the visit is to be able to take a bow for having done a good job in managing the bilateral relationship. Not to be partisan, but Clinton has an unsurpassed ability to take credit for matters with which he had little to do, and we will see this political strength in full force during the Tokyo trip.”

In Moscow, the summit of Group of 7 leaders--which Yeltsin calls the “Big Eight,” counting himself among them--is likely to boost the Kremlin chief’s reelection chances, as the gathering enhances his image as a full player on the world stage.

Although Russians reject political leaders they see as selling out their national interests to the West, the perception of the Kremlin as a respected member of the international community remains important to all but the most xenophobic of voters.

Russian media loyal to Yeltsin have already been trumpeting the nuclear security summit Friday and Saturday as a product of the Russian leader’s campaign to clean up the environmental mess and the technological problems bequeathed to the former Soviet republics by Communist rulers.

With Communist presidential hopeful Zyuganov now ahead of Yeltsin in opinion polls, the G-7 session may give the incumbent a high-profile stage for reminding Russians of the harrowing legacy left by the ideological predecessors of his chief opponent.

The largely ceremonial agenda of the summit has drawn criticism from Russian political opponents who view Clinton’s visit as another move by Washington to make Yeltsin look presidential ahead of his tough reelection bid on June 16.

“To suggest this is simply atmospherics to support Mr. Yeltsin, which has been bounced around a bit, is inaccurate,” one U.S. official in Moscow involved in preparing the summit said. But he conceded that “there are not going to be agreements you can take hold of and put out to the public.”

The summit’s value will more likely be the impetus it gives to existing Western efforts to help Russia develop an accounting system for sensitive materials and to provide job security for scientists at strategic institutes, he said.

While the summit may be intended to cast Yeltsin and Clinton as crusaders against nuclear hazards, it will be taking place under the shadow of the Chernobyl nuclear accident’s 10th anniversary and the myriad reviews and critiques being released to assess progress on safety since the world’s worst nuclear disaster occurred April 26, 1986.

U.S. officials in Washington said the G-7, made up of the world’s leading industrial nations, is prepared to increase its contribution to Chernobyl cleanup costs to $3 billion from an earlier pledge of $2.3 billion.

Russian and international environmental groups have complained that the Moscow meeting is missing an important chance to do something substantive on a serious issue. Several environmental groups are planning a “counter-summit” to discuss nuclear safety issues that their activists complain are being given short shrift by the G-7.

Broder reported from Washington and Williams from Moscow.