Clinton Works on Thawing Chill With Russians

Within hours of an agreement between Russia and the United States on the shape of the international peacekeeping force for Kosovo, President Clinton and Russian Premier Sergei V. Stepashin worked Saturday to ease the chill that has characterized their countries’ relations for much of the past two years.

National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger told reporters afterward that Clinton was impressed by his first meeting with the recently appointed Russian prime minister and that the two leaders had immediately focused on reviving several of the more positive--but long-dormant--aspects of Moscow’s ties with the U.S.

Those ties began to cool two years ago, about the time the Clinton administration started pushing the issue of NATO enlargement hard and publicly. NATO’s 78-day air campaign against Yugoslavia increased the chill to a freeze.

The Clinton-Stepashin session unfolded Saturday afternoon in this cathedral city by the Rhine on the fringes of a gathering of leaders from the world’s seven leading industrial nations--the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Canada and Italy--plus Russia. The meeting is known as the Group of 8, or G-8, summit.

In other summit developments Saturday:

* The White House announced that Clinton will travel to the Balkans on Tuesday before returning to the United States. He is scheduled to meet with the leaders of Macedonia and Albania, and to visit a refugee camp in Macedonia where ethnic Albanians who fled Kosovo are waiting to return home. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was given a hero’s welcome at such a camp earlier this month.

* The eight leaders agreed on a charter titled “Aims and Ambitions for Lifelong Learning.” The document, directed at improving the knowledge and skills of people worldwide, is part of an effort to improve both social conditions and the efficiency of the global economy. It commits the eight governments to providing access to everyone for learning and training, to encouraging continued learning and to helping developing countries upgrade their educational systems.

* The leaders also decided on a two-step approach for funding the reconstruction of the Balkans and southeastern Europe. A conference of potential donor nations will be called in the next two to three weeks to fund short-term humanitarian aid projects, while a second conference will be called in the fall to look at longer-term development needs.

Saturday’s Clinton-Stepashin meeting came on the Russian leader’s first trip abroad since he was appointed premier last month. The two reportedly discussed an array of issues, including further reductions in the nuclear arsenals of both countries, the problem of containing the nuclear proliferation threat, and reviving a bilateral U.S.-Russian commission that has been headed by Vice President Al Gore and several of Stepashin’s predecessors, beginning with Viktor S. Chernomyrdin.

“It was a very good meeting,” concluded Berger. “Stepashin was quite clear in saying that he thinks it’s important to move beyond” the tensions of the Kosovo war.

At a separate news conference, Stepashin also expressed satisfaction with the meeting.

“We’ve defined how we are going to work, not only in Kosovo but beyond,” he said.

The meeting in Cologne followed similar upbeat comments made by Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor D. Sergeyev after they struck a deal with their American counterparts late Friday in the Finnish capital, Helsinki, that will allow up to 3,600 Russian troops to deploy in Kosovo as part of the NATO-led international peace force there.

At his news conference Saturday, Stepashin said a primary topic for the leaders during their talks had been his country’s role in the G-8 and that the members had emphasized that “Russia is a full-fledged member.”

“The international economy, and Europe in particular, has no future without Russia,” he said.

The prime minister also emphasized Russia’s cordial relations with the other members. He said the eight leaders had gotten along so well that they couldn’t stop talking during lunch.

“We couldn’t even drink our coffee because our conversation was so animated,” he said.

Despite all this, analysts believe the path to improved relations will be both difficult and uncertain.

One key reason: It will depend heavily on Russia’s increasingly imperious president, Boris N. veltsin, who was scheduled to arrive today for the summit’s finale. Despite his occasionally bizarre behavior, there seems little doubt he remains in control in Moscow.

Yeltsin’s health has been particularly erratic of late and has no doubt affected his mercurial behavior. He has not been on a foreign trip since February, when he hopped to Jordan for a few hours to attend the funeral of King Hussein.

He has also been unpredictable with his ministers, first supporting their work and then suddenly withholding approval in an apparent effort to underscore his personal authority over Russian policy. This has given rise to contradictions.

On Thursday, Yeltsin thundered that Russia would settle for nothing less than a sector of its own in the Kosovo peace mission, but less than 24 hours later, his government signed the Helsinki agreement that calls for Russian troops to be sprinkled around Kosovo in established NATO sectors of control.

Yeltsin is expected to spend only about five hours in Cologne today, including a private meeting with Clinton. The Russian president was to be briefed on the progress of the summit by a returning Stepashin at a Moscow airport early today before departing for Cologne.

Clinton and Stepashin did have their differences Saturday.

On the Balkans, Stepashin disputed Clinton’s insistence that any reconstruction aid for the region not go to Serbia--the dominant Yugoslav republic, of which Kosovo is a province--as long as Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic remains in power. Stepashin insisted that the country’s residents should not be held economically hostage to power politics.

“These are two separate issues: political change in Yugoslavia and offering humanitarian aid to Yugoslavia,” Stepashin said.

In discussions with all seven other leaders, Stepashin urged them to push for forgiving Russia’s $69 billion in lingering Soviet-era debt that constitutes about half of Russia’s debt burden. He argued that Russia is about half the size of the Soviet Union and that it graciously took on the debt after the Soviet collapse on behalf of former Soviet republics that are now independent countries.

Since Russia’s currency, the ruble, and its financial markets crashed last summer, Moscow has been unable to sustain its payments.

Stepashin also asked the members to push for the release of a $4.5-billion installment of a loan package from the International Monetary Fund. He pledged that he would do his best to meet the terms of the loan, including pushing for passage of new banking and tax legislation.