Clinton, Yeltsin Open Discussions in Climate of Peace
By Ann Devroy
Washington Post Staff Writer

    With a dispute over Bosnia delayed and an agreement close on ending arms
sales to Iran, President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin opened
talks yesterday with a public embrace and soothing declarations about the new
"climate of warm peace, not cold war."

    White House and Russian officials continued to call these two days of
ceremony and discussions a "summit." But the atmospherics and mix of economic
cooperation, agreement signings and private resolution of disagreements have
moved these sessions since the end of the Cold War into the category of
almost routine diplomacy.
    Bosnia, a major area of unease, became what Secretary of State Warren
Christopher called an area of "common ground" with the Bosnian government's
proposal at the United Nations yesterday to delay for six months the lifting
of an arms embargo against Bosnia. (Story, Page A27.)
    The Russians oppose lifting the embargo, an action that would help the
Muslim-led government arm itself against Moscow's allies, the Bosnian Serbs.
Clinton favors removing the embargo, but said the issue for now is
"academic."
    On Iran, Christopher said, "I believe there is a resolution in sight" to
the contentious disagreement over Moscow's sale to Tehran of $1 billion a
year in conventional weaponry, including submarines and missile technology.
The leaders will discuss the issue further today, officials said, but Yeltsin
and his aides have indicated they would agree to avoid further sales
contracts with Iran while concluding those already signed.
    The summit gives Clinton a non-controversial breather in a period when he
has taken repeated knocks. Clinton's handling of the U.S.-Russian
relationship gets high marks from many neutral analysts, and even partisan
Republicans have a hard time criticizing it.
    This is Clinton's third full-scale session with Yeltsin, and his fifth
meeting overall with the Russian leader. Officials said Clinton quickly
chucked the first three hours of group discussion, and brought Yeltsin
through his private office and out to the patio on a glorious Washington
morning to chat without aides for nearly three hours. One official called it
"patio diplomacy," a far cry from Clinton's first nerve-wracking and
intensely choreographed foray on the summit stage in April 1993.
   Clinton, at the colorful arrival ceremonies on the White House South Lawn,
set the tone: "Today we meet not as adversaries, but as partners in the quest
for a more prosperous and more peaceful planet," he said. "In so many areas
our interests no longer conflict. They coincide. And where we do disagree we
can discuss our differences in a climate of warm peace, not cold war."
Yeltsin offered a similarly-upbeat reply, but noted with a smile, "It is fair
to say that the United States is a strong partner and not an easy one to deal
with, just like Russia."
     Only on the issue of Russia's dominance of the former republics of the
Soviet Union did administration officials acknowledge difficult talks. The
^SUnited States is seeking an agreement by Russia to engage in peacekeeping in
troubled or crisis-riven areas under the auspices of international
organizations. The Russians maintain their relationship to the former
republic and their location at Russia's border give Moscow the right to
determine how efforts at security and peacekeeping should proceed.
        The two leaders began what officials said would be intense
^Qdiscussions about a formula for ending the long war in one of the former
republics, Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan. Russia has
sent peacekeeping troops there, circumventing a peace agreement negotiated
through the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. The Clinton
administration wants Moscow to accept an international formula for settling
the conflict. Many Washington analysts view this issue as a key test of
Russian intentions in former Soviet territories, where Yeltsin has asserted a
Russian right to act unilaterally.
    On Bosnia, Christopher said the two presidents intend to use "the new
circumstances" of a delay in lifting the arms embargo to take a series of
steps to push the Bosnian Serbs into agreeing to a peace plan. Among those
steps, he said, are a stricter enforcement and expansion of the zones from
^S^Qwhich Bosnian Serb heavy weaponry is excluded, stricter economic sanctions o
n
the Bosnian Serbs and monitoring of Serbia's agreement not to arm the Serbs
in Bosnia.
    The Russians oppose lifting the embargo, arguing it would lead to a wider
war, and argue that stronger and continuing pressure on Serbia and on the
Bosnian Serbs to accept a peace settlement should be the route to ending the
two-year conflict. Clinton, however, had pledged to move toward ending the
embargo, and was required by Congress to take steps toward that end by Oct.
15.
    Both leaders now agree, Christopher told reporters in the evening, to use
the six-month postponement to apply new pressures for a settlement. Earlier
in the day, Yeltsin made clear his distaste for lifting the arms embargo.
Asked his reaction to doing so even after a delay, he said, "negative, of
course." Officials said no agreement was set on an international conference
on Bosnia. On another contentious issue, Russian sales of conventional arms
to Iran, the two presidents "discussed in some detail" U.S. objections and
"agree they need^S to continue," an official said. Both former President Bush
and Clinton have pressed Yeltsin to halt the sales to a country the United
States views as an outlaw..
    But officials said last night that the United States is proposing to help
make up the loss in trade through agreements on other fronts, in exchange for
a Russian agreement to stop the selling once its contracts are fulfilled. The
White House and Russia want to emphasize economic cooperation as the main
theme of this gathering, and arranged a signing ceremony yesterday to open
that phase of the talks set for Wednesday. Russian and American officials
signed more than $1 billion in commercial agreements.
   As if to signify how normal the meetings have become, the tense atmosphere
that often accompanied these sessions, during hour upon hour of arms control
^Qdebate, was mostly nonexistent. Yeltsin had time to break away from talks for
a lengthy luncheon at the State Department, and both leaders took time to
attend a White House ceremony observing Russia's allied role in World War II.
Russia had been excluded from D-Day ceremonies in Europe this summer, and the
two leaders decided to note the huge Russian loss of life and other sacrifice
in the war.