MOSCOW, Sept. 27
Russian President Boris Yeltsin went to the United States with proposals
for sweeping nuclear disarmament aimed at bolstering his position at home and
securing his place in history, aides and experts here said today.
Yeltsin chose the U.N. General Assembly in New York to deliver what he
considered a seminal address, conscious that Soviet President Mikhail
Gorbachev had used the same venue for a key 1988 speech signaling the end of
the Cold War. Yeltsin intended Monday's U.N. speech and his meetings with
President Clinton today and Wednesday to inaugurate a new era of foreign
policy-making, according to advisers who helped formulate his speech and
other sources.
The Russian leader proposed that Russia, the United States, China, France
and Britain agree on deep cuts in their nuclear arsenals and ban nuclear-arms
testing and the manufacture or reuse of nuclear materials. He also sought to
carve out a Russian sphere of influence among the former Soviet republics and
called for regulation of conventional arms sales and greater efforts at
global conversion of arms industries.
But a cautious and even skeptical reaction to Yeltsin's proposals, both
here and in the West, reflects the difficulty of formulating crisp new
worldviews in the muddy era of post-Cold War uncertainty. In particular, many
here questioned Yeltsin's call for further nuclear reductions at a time when
earlier arms control pacts - the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties, or
STARTs - remain to be implemented (START I) or have not even been ratified
(START II).
"He needs to prove he can carry out a purposeful policy to its conclusion
without getting distracted," said Alexei Arbatov, an expert on arms policy
here. "In this, after the last two or three years, Yeltsin has a lot to
prove."
Experts here cited a variety of motives for Yeltsin's nuclear-arms
proposals, including Moscow's desire to appear more assertive in world
affairs after a period of following Washington's lead and the Russian
president's personal competition with Gorbachev for a respected place in
history.
Both the Pentagon and the Russian Defense Ministry have argued against
deeper nuclear cuts. Clinton accepted the Pentagon's recommendation last
week; the Russian army, lacking funds to build up conventional forces, has
developed a new doctrine emphasizing nuclear weapons.
"Presidents Yeltsin and Clinton will exchange loud peace initiatives this
week, just as their predecessors did during the best years of 'new thinking,'
" defense commentator Pavel Felgengauer wrote today. "But in the meantime, a
broad interdepartmental consensus has been reached in Moscow that everything
should be frozen for a long time at the level of general declarations."
But several experts said that Yeltsin's call for further nuclear cuts
should not be dismissed as mere rhetoric.
Sergei Rogoff, another arms control expert here, said Yeltsin is not
seeking another 800-page arms control pact, a START III, but rather is hoping
to find ways to change the model of mutual nuclear fear that continues to
govern U.S.-Russian relations. Despite pledges by both sides to retarget
their missiles, that relationship of mutual deterrence remains essentially
unchanged from Cold War days, he said.
More practically, Rogoff said, Yeltsin's proposals could lead to informal
agreements between the two countries to maintain arsenals smaller than those
negotiated under START II. Such agreements could reduce the costs Russia
would incur if it built single-warhead missiles to replace all the multiple
warhead missiles that must be destroyed under START II, he said.
Andrei Kortunov, a foreign-policy expert who helped write the speech,
said today that it represents an attempt to move beyond Gorbachev's "new
thinking" and offer a "more realistic, more pragmatic" approach to the new,
multipolar world. But Kortunov said Yeltsin's call for further nuclear cuts
bore some resemblance to the sweeping but largely empty declarations of
Soviet days.
"I can't rule out the possibility that this speech is also a first step
toward the 1996 presidential campaign," Kortunov added. Yeltsin has not yet
announced whether he will run for reelection.