Yeltsin Talks Tough Before Arrival in China

As relations between Russia and China approach their warmest moment in half a century, President Boris N. Yeltsin preceded his arrival here Wednesday with a blast at illegal Chinese immigrants and a vow to delay final resolution of a 300-year-old border dispute.

The dual swipes at this host country while embarking on a state visit were clearly concessions to nationalist critics as the Russian leader wages an uphill reelection bid.

But as Beijing rolled out the red carpet for the Kremlin chief, the remarks during his campaign stopover in the Far Eastern Russian city of Khabarovsk risked fresh offense in what has long been a prickly relationship.

The foreign ministers of China and the then-Soviet Union agreed to define their border during a 1991 Moscow meeting, and the painstaking work of fixing each post along the frontier has been completed except for about 12 miles.

Border disputes and an atmosphere of distrust that prevailed between the Communist giants after their ideological falling-out in the 1950s led to armed clashes and the massing of troops by both sides.

Yeltsin only last week praised the work of the demarcation teams, and his aides had earlier predicted that the last sections could be marked in time for Yeltsin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin to sign a final treaty during this visit.

But the governor of Russia’s Maritime Province, in which the last unmarked border areas are located, proclaimed this month that demarcation had been suspended.

“We will not give away one centimeter of Maritime land to China,” the governor, Yevgeny Nazdratenko, told journalists, setting off a furor in the Kremlin.

Nazdratenko’s vow followed the resignation of Gen. Valery Rozov, head of the military group responsible for border demarcation in the Maritime region. Rozov, believed to be aligned with nationalist anti-Yeltsin forces, was protesting a decision to cede China two small and economically useless islands in the Tumannaya River bed and an unnavigable section of the shallow river--a move Rozov claimed would jeopardize the strategic interests of Russia.

Russian Cossacks, an armed and staunchly nationalist paramilitary group, staged protests last week, calling into question the project to mark a frontier that has been in dispute for three centuries.

Yeltsin ordered the stalled demarcation work speeded up last week, but appears now to have backtracked under the pressure.

“I know that the Maritime leadership and the local population still have reservations, and their alarm is understandable,” Yeltsin told supporters in Khabarovsk just before he boarded his flight for Beijing.

He said Russia’s promise to settle the border questions will eventually be fulfilled and that a compromise will be found. But he risked stoking the nationalist fires with his parting vow that “the Far East was and always will be Russian. It is for us and our descendants to live here.”

Yeltsin also bowed to local resentment of Chinese guest workers accused by Russians of undercutting them for scarce jobs.

“In the Khabarovsk region alone there are 180,000 living illegally, mostly Chinese citizens,” Yeltsin told the crowd of well-wishers, urging low quotas for legal immigration and strict application of resident alien laws.

Yeltsin was greeted with flowers on arrival at the airport in Beijing and later received a 21-gun salute during a welcoming ceremony at Tiananmen Square, scene of the violent 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.

Jiang, the president and Communist Party chief who once studied in the Soviet Union, welcomed Yeltsin with a little Russian: “It’s very nice weather we are having, and it is a good sign for our relations,” the New China News Agency reported.

Neither Chinese officials nor the media took immediate note of Yeltsin’s remarks in Khabarovsk.

Yeltsin is likely to explain his comments as a position imposed on him by the election campaign. The 65-year-old incumbent faces a tough challenge from Communist Party leader Gennady A. Zyuganov and frequent accusations by nationalists that he is undermining the economy and security of Russia.

Nevertheless, the resurgent border issue could diminish the high expectations diplomats and ordinary people had for this visit.

Despite the border issue, Yeltsin’s visit is expected to further the warming trend that has developed between the powerful neighbors over the past five years.

The Russian leader, who failed to make two previously scheduled visits because of his precarious health, is to sign more than a dozen agreements here and in Shanghai on cooperation in energy, trade and security.