Startled Clinton Calls for Continuity in U.S.-Russian Relations

As surprised as anyone by the resignation of Boris N. Yeltsin, President Clinton and his closest foreign policy advisors Friday praised the departing Russian president and stressed that continuity is key in the sudden ascendancy of his handpicked successor, Vladimir V. Putin. But some officials admitted that managing U.S.-Russian relations in the Putin era will be tricky.

After talking by telephone with Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told reporters that she had received assurances there will be no immediate change in Moscow’s stance toward the United States and that Washington plans no shift either.

But some specialists were quick to admit that the future is filled with question marks. The 47-year-old Putin, a political unknown five months ago when he was named prime minister, comes to power at a time when Moscow’s relations with the United States have been strained by a series of events, most recently the U.S.-led assault on Yugoslavia and Russia’s military adventure in the separatist republic of Chechnya.

Those ties face new strains as the globe’s two biggest nuclear powers get ready to deal with a touchy set of issues, including America’s desire to launch a new round of arms-reduction talks with Moscow while Washington also hopes to develop and deploy a national missile-defense system.

While it is the perceived missile threat from so-called rogue states such as North Korea that has generated the political push in the United States for a missile-defense system, Russia strenuously opposes any such deployment, fearing it could render useless its own aging nuclear arsenal and trigger a new arms race that it could not possibly win.

In November, Moscow announced it had tested a short-range interceptor missile in a move interpreted as much as a political warning as a test of new technology.

Russia, as many nations, is also deeply unsettled by the enormousness of America’s power, and Putin noted that unease Friday, saying Moscow will strive for a “multipolar” world--code words for counterbalancing the disproportionate influence the U.S. enjoys in global affairs.

While use of the expression is not new, some analysts believe that Putin’s rise to the presidency could mean a hardening of the tone, if not the substance, of Moscow’s policies toward the West. They note that in pressing the war in Chechnya, Russia’s new president has already demonstrated a tough, no-nonsense decisiveness and has been quick to play on Russian nationalism.

“There will be a much stronger military component in their foreign policy,” predicted Heinrich Vogel, director of Germany’s Federal Institute for Eastern and International Studies. “They will be less willing to listen.”

Dimitri Simes, director of the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom, a Washington-based foreign affairs think tank, was also skeptical.

“He seems to have impressive leadership credentials and to know what he wants . . . but we must show him that if he wants to build a new Russian consensus on the basis of Russian chauvinism, he won’t have U.S. support,” Simes said. “I don’t like the way he came to power; I don’t like his background.” Putin is a 15-year veteran of Moscow’s intelligence service whose rise to the top was aided by now-disgraced reformer Anatoly B. Chubais.

“We began the Yeltsin era hoping his successor would be a younger, healthier version of [Soviet dissident] Andrei D. Sakharov, but we’ve ended up with a younger, healthier version of Yuri V. Andropov,” Leonid I. Brezhnev’s successor as Soviet leader. “This is not a pleasant gift to the United States for the new millennium.”

U.S. officials admitted that difficulties lie ahead.

“It’s a difficult agenda, and we need to be frank about that, both with ourselves and with the Russians,” noted a White House official who declined to be named. “If there’s a lesson from the Boris Yeltsin era, it’s that engaging with each other, even when we disagree, is the most constructive way to maximize . . . the objectives of both countries.”

Senior Clinton administration officials admitted that they were stunned by Friday’s announcement in Moscow that Yeltsin had resigned. But they insisted that the lack of forewarning had nothing to do with the current strains in U.S.-Russian ties.

“Our impression was that this was the old boy bringing one more rabbit out of his hat . . . of trumping the other guys one last time,” said a senior State Department official who declined to be named. “This was Boris Yeltsin’s way of locking in his choice as successor.”

This official said there was evidence that the decision was a tightly held secret, even within the uppermost levels of the Russian government. The official noted that Ivanov mentioned nothing of a resignation when he spoke with Albright by telephone Thursday and that when the two talked again Friday, Ivanov reportedly confessed that he too had been in the dark.

Speaking with reporters shortly after talking with Yeltsin by telephone, Clinton said he liked the outgoing president “because he was always forthright with me.”

“He always did exactly what he said he would do,” Clinton said. “And he was willing to take chances to try to improve our relationship, to try to improve democracy in Russia.”