Kohl Tries To Ease Yeltsin’s Security Fears Little Progress As They Discuss Nato Expansion Concerns

German Chancellor Helmut Kohl assured President Boris Yeltsin on Saturday that a “rational solution” would be found that would respect Moscow’s security concerns regarding the eastward expansion of NATO while broadening the West’s main defense alliance.

Despite the warm friendship between the two leaders, there was no discernible break in the impasse with Russia over the West’s plan to accept former Soviet satellites into NATO, the U.S.-led security structure in Europe.

“There are still some differences of opinion,” Kohl said at a news conference at the airport on his way home from a brief visit at the country resort where Yeltsin has been spending the extended Russian New Year’s holiday. “But we evaluated a couple of ideas, which I will discuss with my NATO colleagues over the next couple of days on the telephone.”

Kohl was one of the last western leaders to visit Yeltsin before he underwent heart surgery Nov. 5, and he is the first western leader to call on him since Yeltsin returned to work last week. The two generally meet every few months and they have a close relationship.

But summitry and special relationships alone are unlikely to dent the abiding opposition to NATO expansion shared by virtually everyone in Russia’s policy-making elite, including Yeltsin.

They say the planned expansion would create a new division in Europe at a time when Russia should be incorporated into western institutions, not excluded from them. Just last month, Defense Minister Igor Rodionov alarmed some in the West when he said that the planned expansion would set off a new East-West Cold War.

As things stand now, NATO has scheduled a July meeting to issue invitations to a number of new member states that have expressed their desire to join the alliance.

The probable A-list includes Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, all formerly part of the Soviet Bloc.