Word: yeltsin
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...DOUBT A GOOD THING THAT BORIS YELTSIN AND the forces of reform won in Russia. But it was not such a good thing that they needed the firepower of the army to do it. Although Western leaders are relieved that the armed forces came down on the more enlightened side of Moscow's political divide, they must face the disconcerting fact that the generals have earned themselves a place of power in Kremlin policymaking. Already positions have started to harden. Echoes of old, Soviet-sounding themes are being heard beneath the lighter melodies of democracy and reform...
That hard line showed up first in the form of a Yeltsin flip-flop on the notion of an expanded NATO. During an August visit to Warsaw, he had declared that Polish membership in the alliance "would not be counter to Russian interests." That was taken as a green light for drawing much of the old East bloc into the alliance, and Western policy planners immediately went to work on mechanisms for membership. First to join would be the so-called Visegrad countries -- Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary -- probably by the end of the '90s. Then might come...
...suddenly Yeltsin's green light turned red, and the logic of eastward expansion became less obvious. In a September letter to alliance leaders, Yeltsin warned that expansion would be destabilizing and should not go forward. He proposed instead that NATO and Russia jointly guarantee the security of the states in between -- a formula that sounded uncomfortably close to the situation of East-West polarity that existed in the bad old days. "That was clearly the result of the Russian generals' pressure," says Michael Dewar, deputy director of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. "They were furious, and Yeltsin...
...their southern borders are threatened by civil wars in Caucasus, a circumstance unforeseen by the original treaty. Western negotiators are opposed to changes. "CFE is a good agreement," says a senior British diplomat. "The Russian generals never liked it, and now they feel in a stronger position to press Yeltsin to dilute it." Nevertheless, some Western leaders are hinting at a compromise. Manfred Worner, NATO's Secretary-General, agrees that the treaty must not be changed. But, he adds cryptically, it can be "reinterpreted...
...only advise utmost caution when thinking about moving NATO eastward," says former German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. "We should not exclude Russia." Among the few remaining advocates of early enlargement are the hapless Central European countries with better reasons than Russia to fear for their security. Yeltsin's flip-flop caused acute anxiety in Warsaw, Prague and Budapest. "Poland's striving toward NATO is irreversible," said Foreign Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski. "We are against placing Poland in the gray zone between East and West...