Shake-Up Presents a Hurdle for Clinton

The latest political convulsion in Moscow presents President Clinton with one of the trickiest foreign policy questions of his presidency: How should Washington deal with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and his efforts to end the war in Yugoslavia?

Push Yeltsin too hard in his straits to agree with NATO conditions for ending the conflict in the Balkans, and the diplomatic track could break down completely.

On the other hand, a U.S. decision to visibly prop up Yeltsin long enough for the Russian leader’s special Kosovo envoy, Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, to endorse a peace deal shaped by NATO and then sell it to Yugoslavia could be read in Moscow as a cynical attempt by outsiders to meddle in the country’s internal affairs. Such an approach--which could involve, for example, a promise of International Monetary Fund assistance to Yeltsin’s cash-strapped nation--would risk damaging U.S. relations with Russia for years to come.

“If the administration says [to Yeltsin], ‘Help us on Kosovo and we’ll get you the money you need,’ then he may have no choice but to be helpful,” said Dimitri Simes, a respected Russia specialist who heads the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom in Washington. “But this would be unpopular in Russia, hurt Yeltsin, and hurt U.S.-Russian affairs. It would mean putting Kosovo ahead of longer-term relations with Russia.”

No matter how the administration adjusts to the latest twist of events in Moscow, where Yeltsin fired Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov on Wednesday, the result is likely to affect the search for peace in Kosovo, a province of Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic, and long-term U.S. relations with Russia--a nation whose rusting nuclear arsenal and residual power ensure that it will remain an important global player for some time to come.

The last time the Russian parliament voted to impeach Yeltsin, in October 1993, Clinton openly backed his Russian counterpart. But political analysts note that circumstances were far different then, and Yeltsin--now aging, politically weakened and again facing the threat of impeachment--was a very different leader.

Addressing reporters at a routine briefing here Wednesday, State Department spokesman James P. Rubin was careful not to take sides in the latest Russian political drama, instead stressing the need for a “constructive working relationship with the Russian government on a broad range of issues.”

Rubin indicated that Chernomyrdin was pressing ahead with his diplomatic mission to find common ground between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Yugoslavia, citing a two-hour meeting with Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott in Moscow. Talbott also met Wednesday with Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov.

Rubin said Talbott and the Russians agreed to establish two working groups concerning the conflict in Yugoslavia: one to study military problems, the other to tackle civilian issues.

“The discussions were serious; they were constructive; they, by all accounts, were not affected by the political developments in Moscow,” Rubin said.

Yeltsin and Chernomyrdin are considered essential players in any diplomatic solution to the messy war in Yugoslavia. Last week’s agreement in Bonn between Russia and seven leading Western countries on a set of ambiguous “general principles” for ending the conflict raised hopes that a negotiated settlement might be possible.

One senior U.S. official described the process as a gradual one of “penetrating levels of Russian consciousness” and pushing Moscow to accept NATO’s positions.

The official noted, for example, that it took weeks to convince Moscow that NATO was serious in its goals of stabilizing Kosovo and protecting the human rights of Serbs and ethnic Albanians alike.

The next level, the official noted, has been seeking Moscow’s backing for a postwar international peace force with a strong core of NATO forces. At alliance headquarters in Brussels, officials interpret “NATO core” to mean a force at least half composed of troops drawn from alliance countries.

Chernomyrdin reportedly has floated the idea of a force with a large Russian and Ukrainian representation but only 30% of its personnel drawn from NATO nations.

Another critical step for the alliance, winning Russian acceptance of NATO’s conditions for a Kosovo settlement, is a diplomatic task the success of which has never been certain, even without complications.

But complications have already arisen: Saturday’s bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, which dramatically hardened anti-American sentiment in Beijing, also strengthened Moscow’s call for a bombing pause before negotiations begin--a sequence of events that NATO insists is backward.

Meanwhile, Yeltsin has further undermined his single-digit domestic approval rating by firing Primakov.

That Yeltsin’s nominee to become prime minister, Interior Minister Sergei V. Stepashin, is directly linked to Russian atrocities in the separatist republic of Chechnya also doesn’t help.

“From the U.S. point of view, the tremendous level of instability, uncertainty and potential chaos in Moscow makes any attempt to manipulate the Russians in the U.S. interest much more complicated and uncertain,” said Peter Reddaway, a Russia specialist at George Washington University.