Yeltsin Anger May Be Fed by Rumor

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin declared Wednesday that he believed progress was being made toward peaceful resolution of the Iraqi standoff and warned President Clinton that he could provoke a world war if he went ahead with threatened airstrikes.

It was the strongest statement Yeltsin has made in the latest confrontation between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the U.N. Special Commission charged with verifying that Baghdad has no means of producing weapons of mass destruction.

“We must try to make Clinton see that his actions in Iraq could lead to a world war,” Yeltsin told First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly B. Chubais in a televised Kremlin meeting. “He is acting too noisily, and one must be careful in a world saturated with all sorts of weapons that are sometimes in the hands of terrorists.”

It was not clear from Yeltsin’s unscripted comments at the start of his meeting whether he intended to refer to the Iraqi leadership as terrorists. Baghdad has long been an ally of Russia, and the Kremlin has led the diplomatic campaign against any resort to force to compel Iraq to comply with U.N.-mandated weapons inspections.

Yeltsin’s adamant warning may have been instigated by recent Russian media reports asserting that the United States was threatening nuclear strikes against Iraq--a contention the U.S. government officially denies.

“Press reports that the United States is planning to use nuclear weapons to destroy chemical or biological weapons storage facilities in Iraq have no basis in fact,” U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Hoagland said in a statement issued here. “The United States has no plans or intentions of using nuclear weapons against Iraq. We are aware of the enormous implications of using nuclear weapons.”

The statement went on to say that if any nation were “foolish enough” to attack the United States or its allies, a “swift, devastating and overwhelming” response could be achieved without nuclear weapons.

The misguided Russian media reports may have been prompted by resolutions by Communist and nationalist deputies who control the Duma, the powerless but vocal lower house of parliament, calling for military support for Iraq should Washington use nuclear weaponry.

Moscow has repeatedly insisted that only diplomatic pressures be brought to bear on Baghdad, despite Hussein’s months-long frustration of the international weapons inspection regime, with which he must comply to get harsh U.N. economic sanctions lifted from his country.

The U.N. Security Council has made consideration of sanctions relief contingent on its inspectors confirming that Baghdad abides by disarmament resolutions imposed after Iraq’s defeat in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The resolutions forbid the vanquished country from producing or stockpiling weapons of mass destruction or even possessing the means to do so.

Even Russian officials now concede that Iraq probably has at least the means to produce chemical weapons, but Moscow has still taken a firm stand against Washington’s threats to bomb Baghdad into compliance.

Deputy Foreign Minister Viktor Posuvalyuk has been in Baghdad for most of the past week pressing the Iraqi leadership to agree to a compromise that would avert another deadly showdown between a U.S.-led Western military alliance and the poorly armed Iraqis.

In a telephone conversation with French President Jacques Chirac, Yeltsin said he believed that progress was being made in Posuvalyuk’s talks, Chirac spokeswoman Catherine Colonna said in Paris.

But the Foreign Ministry here has been considerably more reticent in its announcements since an embarrassing incident Monday when Russian diplomats proclaimed a breakthrough in negotiating access for weapons inspectors to a number of restricted sites in Iraq--only to have the Iraqi Foreign Ministry swiftly deny it.