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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Pact Formally Ends Vestiges Of Cold War Moscow Accepts Voice In Nato In Exchange For Expanded Alliance

John F. Harris Washington Post

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, created 48 years ago to protect Western Europe from a feared attack by the Soviet Union, formally agreed Tuesday to give Moscow a voice in the alliance as a way to soothe Russian fears about NATO’s impending eastward expansion.

President Clinton and the other leaders of the 16 NATO nations, joined by Russian President Boris Yeltsin, crowded into an ornate, gilded salon at the Elysee Palace to sign their names to a document that anticipates a new era of limited cooperation with Russia. The host, French President Jacques Chirac, grandly heralded the elimination “of the last vestiges of the Cold War.”

Yet what was intended as a strictly ceremonial occasion - enacting an accord negotiated laboriously for months before a deal was struck two weeks ago - took an unscripted turn. The ensuing confusion showed vividly how the West’s relationship with Russia can still be a frustrating and uncertain affair.

Yeltsin, who said that “Russia still views negatively the expansion plans for NATO,” nonetheless hailed Tuesday’s agreement for more cooperation with the alliance as a “victory for reason.” As if to show his good will, he then made an impromptu announcement that, as translated by the summit’s official English interpreter, was a unilateral pledge to remove the nuclear warheads from Russian missiles aimed at NATO nations.

Senior U.S. officials, including White House national security adviser Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, openly acknowledged their surprise and quickly scrambled to learn more. Before the signing ceremony was over, what looked at first like a bold gesture had collapsed like a souffle.

A Yeltsin spokesman said his boss wasn’t promising to physically remove the nuclear explosives, only “deprogram” the missiles so they weren’t technically aimed at NATO nations. This is a symbolic gesture, since a deprogrammed missile can be reprogrammed within minutes; Russia already has reached deprogramming agreements with the United States, France and Britain.

By late Tuesday, U.S. officials said they believed Yeltsin had simply spoken unclearly and been misunderstood, not that he had made a dramatic proposal and quickly scaled it back. Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov said later that Russia is prepared to negotiate an eventual dismantlement of the missiles.

But the episode highlighted what U.S. officials acknowledge is a larger truth about Clinton’s ambitions for what he Tuesday called “a new Europe of unlimited possibility”: Success or failure depends in large measure on how Russia reacts.

Clinton, who has made NATO expansion a signature item of his foreign policy, has insisted that the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe can join the military alliance without unduly antagonizing leaders in Moscow and re-creating the old Cold War divide through Europe.

Yet Yeltsin has long said NATO expansion risks doing exactly that, and many Russian nationalists have been bellicose in their opposition. The NATO-Russia Founding Act, the formal name for the document the leaders signed Tuesday, is described by Clinton administration officials as an attempt to integrate Russia into the affairs of the Brussels-based alliance, and convince leaders in Moscow that it has nothing to fear as NATO takes in former members of the Warsaw Pact. At a summit in Madrid in July, NATO leaders reportedly plan to invite the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland into the alliance, a decision that would require U.S. Senate ratification.

Under Tuesday’s agreement, which is not legally binding in the way a treaty is and does not require Senate approval, Russia will join a new NATO council to set European security policy. When Russia and other NATO nations cannot agree, however, NATO will still set its own policies through its traditional governing body, known as the North Atlantic Council. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright’s formulation is that Russia will have “a voice, not a veto.”

To further woo Yeltsin into striking a deal, NATO Secretary General Javier Solana this month strengthened previous statements by Clinton that NATO does not intend to deploy nuclear weapons on the soil of new members, nor does it plan to deploy substantial numbers of NATO combat forces there.

Clinton left Paris Tuesday night for The Hague, where a ceremony today will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Marshall Plan of U.S. aid to revive Europe after World War II.