Russia, NATO to Hammer Out a New Treaty

By NORMAN KEMPSTER

Dec. 12, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

BRUSSELS —

Russia agreed Wednesday to negotiate with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on a new East-West charter but renewed its determined opposition to the alliance’s plans to extend membership to some of Moscow’s Cold War allies.

Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov, accepting NATO’s call for talks on European security for the next century, said Moscow looks for a wide-ranging treaty that would go far beyond the sort of nonaggression pact that he said could have been signed by adversaries during the Cold War.

But he complained bitterly that NATO’s plans to add members from Central Europe--probably Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic--would redivide Europe less than a decade after the collapse of the iron curtain.

“Security must be indivisible,” Primakov told a news conference after meeting with the foreign ministers of NATO’s 16 member states. “Security should not be just for some.”

Secretary of State Warren Christopher said Primakov’s agreement to press ahead with a NATO-Russia dialogue was “very good news.”

Christopher’s aides dismissed Russia’s continued opposition to NATO enlargement, saying it is no surprise and will not affect alliance plans.

NATO foreign ministers on Tuesday scheduled a meeting of alliance presidents and prime ministers in July in Madrid to invite “one or more” members of the defunct Warsaw Pact to join the organization.

Although NATO has expanded before, most recently when it added Spain about a decade ago, this new step could push the alliance’s territory out to Russia’s western border along its Kaliningrad exclave and cross the Cold War divide.

The United States and Russia described the process in almost diametrically opposite terms.

Christopher said NATO expansion “can lead to full integration of Europe.” A NATO-Russia pact, he added, “would complete the integration of Europe.”

But Primakov insisted that NATO’s plans threatened to split the continent into rival camps.

Primakov and NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana are expected to conduct the negotiations on the proposed alliance-Russia treaty. Talking to reporters with Solana at his side, the Russian foreign minister said he was “on very good terms with the secretary-general.”

Solana “is a very nice man but I wouldn’t use those terms to describe the organization he heads,” Primakov said, speaking through an interpreter.

Solana said he hopes to complete the negotiations in time for the July summit to approve the treaty at the same time it selects new members.

Although U.S. officials said Solana will handle the talks, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said President Clinton will surely discuss the issue with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin at their scheduled March meeting.

Despite the potential impact of NATO expansion on U.S.-Russian relations, the plan has been remarkably noncontroversial in the United States.

So far, the only Republican criticism has been that Clinton is not pushing the process fast enough. Still, the step would carry a substantial cost, both in political terms and in the money that would be required to bring Central European militaries up to NATO standards.

And opposition is starting to develop among nongovernment experts in European affairs.

“There is no good reason to expand NATO,” argued Michael Mandelbaum, a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University in Washington.

All the reasons advanced for it are “hollow, bogus, nonexistent or promise benefits that will come anyway,” he said. “We would be better off not doing it than doing it, and that includes the cost of backing down from the position we have taken. . . . The price of backing down is lower than the price of going ahead.”

But Richard Haass, director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution and a former National Security Council staff member, said NATO enlargement “may be a good idea or a bad idea, but it is an idea whose time has come. Get used to it.”

* DEFENSE CHIEF DONS MUFTI: Seeking to make his defense chief a civilian, Russian president has the incumbent retire from military. A35

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

NATO’s Membership Drive

Of the countries now knocking on NATO’s door, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic are the favorites to be invited to join the military alliance.

NATO members*

ICELAND

PORTUGAL

SPAIN

BRITAIN

FRANCE

BELGIUM

ITALY