Russia, Belarus Sign Pact to Merge Nations

The presidents of Russia and Belarus, seeking to counter Western influence and reunite remnants of the shattered Soviet empire, signed an agreement Friday calling for a merger of their nations as early as next year.

While the legal effect of the pact was unclear, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and Belarussian President Alexander G. Lukashenko agreed in principle to create a single currency, unify their tax systems, eliminate business barriers and let citizens of each country run for public office in the other.

“We are now calling for merging our nations in one union state,” Yeltsin told reporters after the signing ceremony. “We can be proud of such work.”

A union of the two former Soviet republics could help bail out Belarus’ struggling economy and provide a psychic boost for Russians who resent the loss of their country’s international prestige since the collapse of the Soviet Union seven years ago.

It could also alter Russia’s political landscape by opening the door for Lukashenko--a Soviet-style autocrat who has isolated his country from the West--to run for the presidency of Russia when Yeltsin’s term ends in 2000.

“It is very good that we shall march as a single entity and, God willing, as a single state into the 21st century,” said Lukashenko, who has long pushed the idea of a merger.

Belarus occupies a strategic position on Russia’s western border, shielding it from countries that have recently joined, or hope to join, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Its population of 10 million people is largely Slavic, like that of Russia, and the two nations have more in common culturally than most of the other 13 republics that made up the Soviet Union.

Yeltsin and Lukashenko have repeatedly pledged to take steps toward union. In 1997, they reached an agreement to seek economic and political integration of their nations. That treaty was a beefed-up version of a similar pact that the duo had agreed to the previous year.

Opponents of the merger called Friday’s agreement a political ploy by two unpopular presidents and predicted that the pact will not go any further.

“I am sure nothing will come of this, since it is clear from the start that this declaration of intention is nothing but cheap political adventurism on the part of both President Yeltsin and Lukashenko,” said Gennady D. Karpenko, a leading critic of Lukashenko in Belarus.

The two leaders themselves were notably vague about the specifics of what they had signed. It was unclear from their public remarks, for example, whether a referendum will be held in Russia on the merger plan--or would even be necessary--and how much of the agreement would require ratification by parliament.

The ailing Yeltsin, who has appeared more vigorous in recent days, also was vague about whether Russians would have to vote to enact specific measures bringing the two countries closer.

“What is the attitude of our people toward a referendum?” he pondered in remarks broadcast by Russian television. “If it does not come up, it does not come up. But if it comes up, it needs to be solved somehow. And then we must ask the people, ‘Which option do you support?’ ”

Belarus is perhaps best known in the West as the country that shot down and killed two American balloonists in 1994 during an international race. Lukashenko charged that the two were spies, and he never apologized.

A former collective farm manager, Lukashenko extended his term as president in a questionable 1996 referendum never recognized by the U.S. He has shut down opposition newspapers and jailed hundreds of dissidents who oppose his rule. Washington recalled its ambassador to Belarus last summer after the government denied the ambassador and his family access to their residence.

Lukashenko, who recently expressed regret that Belarus turned over its Soviet-era nuclear weapons to Russia in the early 1990s, has imposed fiscal policies that have produced an economic collapse even more severe than Russia’s.

The Belarussian ruble has fallen to 14% of its value of a year ago. The inflation rate has jumped to 150% this year as the government printed money to keep the economy afloat. The average monthly salary has plunged from $68 to $30 over the past six months, while the average pension has dropped from $28 to $12 a month.

Russia remains Belarus’ largest single trading partner, but Belarus owes Russia more than $500 million it cannot afford to repay. A merger of the two economies could rescue Belarus by absorbing its currency and removing trade and tax barriers between the two countries.

One measure in Friday’s presidential agreement will permit Belarus to pay domestic Russian prices for products such as natural gas and oil--rates that are far lower than the prices Russia charges foreign countries.

“Lukashenko is trying to dodge responsibility for having plunged his country into disastrous economic dislocation,” said Yuri V. Khodyko, vice chairman of the Belarussian Popular Front, a leading opposition group. “He is obsessed with the idea of becoming the batka [daddy] of all Slavs, and he thinks that the Russian presidency is going to be a springboard for that.”

Despite Lukashenko’s authoritarian methods, a merger between the two countries could have broad appeal among Russia’s 147 million people.

The recent bombing of Iraq by the United States and Britain--over Moscow’s objections--demonstrated how little clout Russia has in world affairs. Patriotic pride runs deep among many Russians, who would like to see their nation regain at least some of its former territory even at the price of subsidizing Belarus’ economy.

The plan is likely to draw the strongest support from Communists, who hope someday to restore the Soviet Union and who see Lukashenko as a potentially forceful candidate in the next presidential election.

Last year’s similar proposal to form a Russian-Belarussian union was scuttled at the last minute when Yeltsin’s pro-Western aides persuaded him not to go through with the agreement. But those advisors were swept out of office by Russia’s economic crisis, and the new prime minister, Yevgeny M. Primakov, is said to favor a merger.

First Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Maslyukov, a Communist who oversees Russia’s economic policy, said the currencies of the two countries could be merged as early as March following the model of the euro, the single currency for much of Europe that will be introduced next week.

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Alexei Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.