Word: yeltsin
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After a Friday session that was both congenial and contentious, the two Presidents emerged with their good humor intact. At the wrap-up news conference, Clinton perched in his wheelchair next to Yeltsin, watching warily to see how the Russian would spin the summit. Yeltsin chose to be unsmiling but soothing. He said he still thought expanding NATO "is a mistake, and a serious one at that." Even so, he was sure he and "Bill," as he chummily called Clinton, would be able to resolve all the outstanding issues. He announced that the two sides would negotiate an agreement that...
...fact, Yeltsin's aides say, he did not assent to NATO expansion. Russians of every political stripe hate the idea that next July their former Warsaw Pact allies, most likely Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, will be invited to join NATO by 1999. But Yeltsin can see that it is inevitable and is determined to squeeze the best possible deal out of the West in return for grudging tolerance. Russia hopes to make the whole process so difficult that the first three new members of the Atlantic alliance might turn out to be the last...
Washington insists that NATO "enlargement" (not expansion, which sounds pushy) will "remain on track" no matter how much it upsets Moscow. Still, Clinton offered Yeltsin a menu of sweeteners called the "three nos." NATO has "no intention, no plan and no reason" to deploy nuclear weapons in new member states. The same goes for combat troops. And Russia will be invited to sit in a joint council at NATO headquarters to talk about whatever the alliance...
Economic opportunities of that sort may turn out to be as important to Moscow as security issues. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says she is encouraged by the assertive government shakeup last week, in which Yeltsin seemed to put economic and administrative reforms back atop his agenda. Reform is to be driven by two new First Deputy Prime Ministers, Anatoli Chubais and Boris Nemtsov, both dynamic and market-oriented politicians...
Foreign Minister Yevgeni Primakov had been touring NATO capitals demanding a formal treaty between the alliance and Moscow. Yeltsin is looking for ironclad promises that the West will never move nuclear weapons and reinforcements into, say, Poland. Clinton has said no--that would give Moscow a veto over NATO decisions. Washington hopes Moscow will settle for a handsomely bound set of assurances, solemnly signed at a summit this spring...