Global Flare-Ups Threaten to Put New Strains on U.S.-Russian Ties

Just as Russia is whittling away at Washington’s doubts about its commitment to domestic reform, destabilizing flare-ups in countries closely allied with the Kremlin threaten new strains on U.S.-Russian relations.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and President Clinton meet for the first time in more than a year today, and explosive global issues are likely to complicate the conversation between two leaders who have long considered themselves friends.

Both presidents denounced India’s nuclear tests last week. But the tests have widened the political rift between Moscow and Washington by pitting Clinton’s swift imposition of economic sanctions against Yeltsin’s position that embargoes are “counterproductive.”

Ethnic violence and mounting tensions in Yugoslavia’s Kosovo province also are frustrating relations between the former Cold War rivals: Russia shares the Slavic heritage and Christian Orthodox religion of the Serbian forces blamed by U.S. officials for turning Kosovo into a powder keg.

Long-standing disputes over NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, Russian nuclear technology sales to Iran and Moscow’s political support to the ostracized Iraqis have further chilled the relationship.

Still, both U.S. and Russian officials were putting a brave face on today’s meeting, being held on the fringes of the Group of 7 industrialized nations’ summit, which now includes Russia in what has been relabeled the Group of 8.

“I don’t expect new differences of opinion to appear. As a matter of fact, they could work to resolve some of the long-standing differences,” Yeltsin spokesman Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky told journalists on the eve of the Clinton-Yeltsin meeting. “But perhaps I’m being overly optimistic.”

Asked if Yeltsin might be swayed to support economic sanctions against India for its nuclear tests, Yastrzhembsky responded: “Under no circumstances.”

U.S. officials said that, although there are distinct disagreements with Russia on regional issues, they do not hinder the relationship.

“There are areas where we fundamentally disagree with Russia,” National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger said. “But we will continue to maintain the relationship so long as we can make progress on those areas that we agree on and deal candidly with them on the areas we disagree on.”

Berger stressed that the economic and political changes underway in Russia represent “the most significant fact of our lifetime” and that they--and not the disagreements about Iraq or Kosovo--set the tone of the relationship.

In the first heady years of post-Soviet relations, Clinton and Yeltsin vowed to hold at least annual summits to build a new foundation for relations in the wake of the Cold War and to work jointly to combat the threat of the nuclear menace spreading.

But Russia’s earlier backsliding on democratic reforms and the refusal of its parliament to ratify the 1993 START II disarmament treaty have discouraged the White House from setting a date for the next formal summit. Clinton has not visited Russia in more than two years, and Yeltsin’s last U.S. trip was in October 1995. In March 1997, the two leaders met in Helsinki, Finland, to spare the then-ailing Yeltsin the strain of a transatlantic journey on what should have been his turn to visit. But the leaders made little headway in easing friction between their states.

Before coming here, a Clinton administration official conceded that linking the next summit to Russia’s ratification of START II was becoming an increasingly costly strategy. Without a recent summit, which can be such a good vehicle for interaction with the Russians, the U.S. has not been able to assess the situation in Russia or prod reforms as aggressively as it would like, the official said.

Cursory meetings such as the one to be held here today leave too much political terrain uncovered, the official said.

The coolness that has descended on U.S.-Russian ties in recent years likewise causes little worry among Kremlin policymakers. Yeltsin last week described relations with Washington in the initial post-Soviet era as based on “illusions and exaggerated expectations.”

Russia’s post-Communist leadership has crossed significant milestones in developing a Western-style market economy, this year even escaping the debate about its commitment to reforms that has marked previous G-7 summits.

However, Russia’s allegiance to Cold War-era allies remains strong. Moscow holds tenaciously to the view that economic cooperation should be spared from fleeting political influences, and its strong trade ties with India are tempering Russia’s response to the Asian state’s nuclear tests.

Trade between Russia and India has reached as much as $5.5 billion a year this decade, making New Delhi one of Moscow’s most important and promising economic partners. Russian leaders are loath to sacrifice lucrative trade ties, even under U.S. pressure to show solidarity against errant nations.

That loyalty, however, may cost Moscow in its standing with the West.

India’s brash emergence onto the nuclear weapons scene with last week’s five tests threw down “a thermonuclear banana skin for Yeltsin ahead of the summit,” the Moscow daily newspaper Sevodnya observed.

Russia has little significant trade with the Serb-led rump Yugoslavia, which has been pauperized by seven years of on-again, off-again wars. But the Kremlin’s desire to appear influential with rogue nations and its unflinching support for fellow Slavs have prompted Moscow to oppose Western attempts to pressure Yugoslavia into relaxing its police presence in volatile Kosovo, where 90% of the population is ethnic Albanian.

Russia also has stood firm on selling nuclear power technology to Iran. Yastrzhembsky, Yeltsin’s spokesman, lambasted suggestions here that the power-plant equipment could be used for military purposes as “figments of the imagination in some U.S. and Israeli media.”

Moscow also has loudly opposed past U.S. and British threats to bomb Iraq for noncompliance with U.N. Security Council resolutions ordering the elimination of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Yeltsin warned earlier this year that the United States was risking “a third world war” with its threats of airstrikes, and it was at the insistence of Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov that U.N. delegations visited Iraq to stave off armed conflict.

Looming large in the erosion of U.S.-Russian relations is the expectation that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will expand to include newly independent Baltic countries that were part of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin has warned of grave consequences for the United States and NATO if the alliance inducts those countries, which would spread NATO arms and forces to Russia’s borders.

Times staff writer Elizabeth Shogren contributed to this report.