Intervention Marks Milestone for Russian Leadership

Having pulled the United States and Iraq back from the brink of another armed confrontation, Russia’s leadership has scored its first major diplomatic victory of the post-Cold War period and demonstrated that it takes more than one superpower to keep the world at peace.

Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov’s success in persuading Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to end his provocative ouster of U.N. weapons inspectors also testifies to Moscow’s resurgent clout in parts of the Arab world and confirms that the Kremlin is as defensive of its interests abroad as are Western leaders.

Most significant, say officials and analysts, is that Russia’s resolution of the tense standoff between Baghdad and the international community enhances the solidarity and authority of the U.N. Security Council by showing that its often-squabbling permanent members can also be allies.

It was the intervention of Russia, which has long enjoyed symbiotic relations with Iraq, that compelled Baghdad to allow unhindered access to its weapons facilities by a U.N. Special Commission seeking to assess Baghdad’s compliance with Security Council resolutions ordering elimination of its weapons.

Russian officials insist that no promises or concessions were made to Iraq. But Primakov did vow to press for accelerated, more efficient inspections in hopes that a positive judgment on compliance will be the outcome, opening the way for easing harsh economic sanctions imposed to punish Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Primakov set off for South America shortly after the hastily convened meeting in Geneva where he won support for Russia’s strategy from top diplomats of the other Security Council permanent members--the United States, Britain, France and China. But his deputies stood ready to interpret the breakthrough and take the bows.

“We should show Iraq light, not fire, at the end of the tunnel,” Deputy Foreign Minister Viktor Posuvalyuk said in an interview with Echo of Moscow radio. “But this does not mean that we are Iraq’s defense attorneys.”

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Having engineered a defusing of the crisis and at the same time drawn the five permanent Security Council members into a unanimous position, Russia has been credited not only with a serious peacemaking contribution in the troubled Persian Gulf region but also to the often fractured United Nations.

In a message to Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, French President Jacques Chirac said the success of the Geneva meeting marked the return of Moscow’s influence in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf “in a very spectacular manner.”

Chirac also saluted Franco-Russian coordination, which he said “functioned remarkably during this crisis.” France and China stood beside Russia in arguing against military measures to force Iraq into submission--a threat raised by the United States and its stalwart ally, Britain.

Foreign policy analysts deemed the Russian-brokered deal a milestone in Moscow’s recovery of international clout and a clever rescue of the United States from a crisis partly of its own making. “The meeting in Geneva has demonstrated that, after a protracted period of being weakened and bled white by domestic turmoil and dwindling prestige on the world stage, Russia is slowly but surely regaining its status as a world power,” said Viktor A. Kremenyuk, a senior analyst at the USA-Canada Institute in Moscow.

He implied that Washington had to swallow its pride and rely on Russia to save it from what would have been a foreign policy disaster--renewed combat with Iraq.

“Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, this is the first real breakthrough for Russia on the Middle East front,” said Alexander O. Filonik, director of the Russian Center for Strategic and International Studies, attributing the diplomatic success to Russia’s gradual emergence from a six-year economic slump and domestic political clashes.

While most analysts agreed that Russia’s efforts were a major boon to the Security Council, some suggest that it was a calculated gesture on the part of Washington to salve Russia’s wounded ego.

“It’s in everybody’s interest to leave a diplomatic role to Russia, in relation to the vexation that it put up with over NATO enlargement,” which Moscow had opposed, said Marie-Claude Smouts, a researcher at the International Center for Studies and Research, a Paris-based think tank. “Nobody wants to humiliate it any further.”

She noted that Iraq has few supporters in the global community, and Russia is perhaps the only one with both influence and incentive. The sanctions have blocked lucrative oil and technology deals with Baghdad, and they make it impossible for Moscow to collect on Soviet-era debt.

Russia’s strength in this instance, Smouts noted, was the growing isolation of U.S. policy in the Security Council. Primakov’s plan brought the allies together in a manner that allowed the United States to conform to the wishes of lesser powers without losing face.

“The planetary feeling, outside London and Washington, is that Iraq has been punished much more than it deserves. We are punishing a country for occupying another for seven months seven years ago,” said Ghassan Salame, a University of Paris professor and Arab affairs analyst. “Yet Israel has been occupying part of another country for 30 years, and nothing happens to it.”

During the crisis, France openly opposed the U.S. threats of military action against Iraq, and still does, its top diplomat made clear Thursday. “We have exited from the crisis, and that’s a good thing,” Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said.

“But we must be able to say clearly under what conditions and when the Iraqis can exit the tunnel,” he added, using what has become a campaign slogan by Moscow to give Iraq encouragement to comply with Security Council resolutions by promising relief from the sanctions, or “light at the end of the tunnel.”

The French, like the Russians, have made no secret of their hopes for renewed commercial deals with Iraq, to whom they used to sell weapons and other industrial goods.

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Williams reported from Moscow and Dahlburg from Paris.