Moscow Peeved at Senate Vote on Iran Trade Ties

Russia has reacted with quiet irritation to a tough Senate vote for sanctions to stop Moscow from allowing the export of missile technology to Iran.

“Russia’s cooperation with Iran fully complies with International Atomic Energy Agency regulations, and they have not complained about Russia violating its obligations,” said Vladimir Rakhmanin, head of the press department at the Foreign Ministry.

A ministry statement added: “The common and highly important objective of preventing the spread of dangerous technologies is in fact being replaced with an attempt to hamper legitimate economic ties with states that Washington finds disagreeable.”

The Russian displeasure came after the Senate’s Friday vote--an overwhelming 90-4 endorsement of sanctions--struck the latest blow to already faltering relations between Washington and Moscow.

American discontent focuses on two issues:

* Russia’s insistence on trading with Iran and other nations frowned on by the U.S.

* The Russian parliament’s failure to ratify the long-delayed START II nuclear weapons treaty negotiated by Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and former President Bush. Clinton refuses to visit Russia until it approves START II, which would slash the two nations’ long-range nuclear weapons.

Russia also openly wants to sell up to four nuclear reactors to Iran, its longtime ally. Moscow’s Atomic Energy Ministry wants to expand this sale with a new research reactor. Russian officials say testily that Moscow has no interest in state-sanctioned nuclear proliferation.

But U.S. lawmakers fear Russia’s many cash-strapped defense research institutes may also be sneaking out missile technology to Iranian clients. They point to the March 22 seizure, on the Azerbaijan-Iran border, of a shipment of 22 tons of Russian nuclear ballistic missile parts bound for Iran as an example of the kind of mischief they want to stop.

The White House, which has been trying gentler tactics to persuade Russian lawmakers to ratify START II and says it is making “considerable progress” at warming up ties, showed irritation at the senators. “I would hope that more members of the Senate would have been mindful of that as they cast their votes,” said White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry.

A presidential veto of the legislation, which still has to have minor details ironed out, seems likely; given the strength of Friday’s vote in favor of sanctions, though, any veto could easily be overridden.

As it stands now, the legislation targets any foreign government or business that supplies ballistic-missile technology to Iran. It would give the president 30 days to send Congress a list of violators. Automatic sanctions would then be imposed, ranging from denial of arms licenses to denial of U.S. foreign aid for up to two years. Aimed at Russia, it also reflects more general congressional unease over the Clinton administration’s approach to high-technology exports, in light of the controversy over satellite launch deals with China and whether alleged Chinese political contributions to the Democratic Party played a role in them.

Russian commentators were angered by what they saw as cheap and hostile American politicking.

“Sanctions against Russia may now be introduced on the basis of rumor and conjecture,” commented defense analyst Pavel Felgengauer.

The important thing about the Senate’s move, he added, is that “for the first time since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Congress has openly declared the new, democratic Russia an enemy that threatens the United States and its allies. . . . This is despite the fact that Moscow has made a series of official statements saying no one in Russia is deliberately helping Iran build missiles, while the U.S. has so far failed to prove otherwise.”

Felgengauer, writing in the liberal daily Sevodnya, suggested darkly that the Iranian missile scare story had been made up by Israeli intelligence--which had thrown in a Russian element for good measure, knowing Moscow is still a boogeyman in America even years after the end of the Cold War. “For most U.S. lawmakers, Russians seem to remain enemies by definition. . . . All the senators needed was a pretext,” he said. But some analysts were more phlegmatic about whether the lawmakers could in fact change White House policy.

“It is very unlikely that sanctions will be introduced,” said Alexander A. Konovalov, head of the Institute for Strategic Assessments, who dismissed U.S. lawmakers as “provincials” who did not understand their own leaders’ policy, and he suggested Clinton would bring them to heel.

“The stakes are too high for Clinton to be able to allow congressmen the luxury of acting like loose cannons,” Konovalov said. If sanctions were imposed, he said, Washington could say goodbye to the idea of a quick ratification of START II.