Yeltsin’s ‘Grand Troika’ Summit Produces Little

The leaders of Russia, Germany and France declared their solidarity Thursday at a summit overshadowed by a Kremlin shake-up, relocated because of President Boris N. Yeltsin’s ill health and watched with wariness by major powers left out of the self-styled “Grand European Troika.”

The purely symbolic summit that had stirred controversy and consternation reflected the Russian leadership’s penchant for exaggerated gestures that set diplomatic nerves aflutter but mean little in the end.

Yeltsin had proposed the three-nation summit during a visit to Paris in May and gradually elevated its significance, insisting that it would usher in a new Moscow-Bonn-Paris power axis that would dominate Europe in the 21st century.

But the meeting’s mere two hours of formal talks restricted the agenda to vague discussions about cultural and economic cooperation and a pledge to get together again in a year or so, next time in France.

Yeltsin, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and French President Jacques Chirac also announced plans to pursue joint development of a new European military transport plane and East-West railways and roadways, and to create a special rapid-reaction rescue force for natural and industrial disasters.

“Russia is moving toward world economic integration with increasing confidence, and Germany and France are assisting it in this advance,” Yeltsin told journalists at a news conference in the snowy, pine-shaded government resort in Bor, outside Moscow.

Chirac applauded the “confiding, close relations between the European Union and Russia,” and Kohl praised the informal meeting as an opportunity to keep nonmember Russia informed about the evolving and expanding trade bloc.

Kohl also addressed the whispers of discomfort emanating from Washington and London that the summit reflected some realignment of ties among European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Russian state, which still sees itself as an adversary of NATO.

“This meeting is not directed against anyone. It is an act of friendship,” Kohl said when asked about the omission of other powers from the Kremlin-inspired troika.

Germany and France are Russia’s most important European trade partners, and the visiting leaders sought to cast their short summit as a pragmatic gathering of those with mutual economic interests.

The meeting had long been planned for Yekaterinburg, the Ural Mountains provincial center that is Yeltsin’s hometown and one of Russia’s largest cities. But Yeltsin’s doctors advised him against airplane travel--even a two-hour flight from Moscow--after he suffered a respiratory infection earlier this month.

Kremlin officials announced less than a week ago that the summit venue would be moved to Moscow, leaving Yekaterinburg’s ambitious governor, Eduard Rossel, holding most of the estimated $11-million bill for lavish refurbishing of four government mansions, patching of potholed roads and snow removal from the winter-bound city.

Residents of the down-at-the-heels industrial city “were amazed how such huge sums could be spent on mansions when millions of people, including in the [Yekaterinburg] region, don’t get their state salaries and pensions on time,” the daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta observed.

Aside from the controversy over the costly switch in venues, the visit by Kohl and Chirac was upstaged by Yeltsin’s dramatic decision Monday to fire his Cabinet. Journalists traveled to Vnukovo airport for the late-night arrivals of the two European leaders Wednesday primarily to get a first look at the little-known, 35-year-old technocrat named to serve as acting prime minister, Sergei V. Kiriyenko.

Many of the questions to Yeltsin at Thursday’s brief news conference sought hints from the enigmatic Kremlin leader as to which ministers will be offered their old jobs and whether Kiriyenko is likely to stay on as head of the government.

“Maybe he will, maybe he won’t,” Yeltsin replied on the latter.

The thorny foreign policy questions that analysts had suggested would dominate the summit, such as the explosive situation in Yugoslavia’s Kosovo province and tensions concerning Iraq, came up only during an informal lunch meeting and brought about no new initiatives, presidential spokesman Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky said.