Clinton Commits To Moscow Visit In May Controversial Trip To Include V-E Celebrations

After more than two months of shifting signals, the White House announced on Monday that President Clinton would travel to Moscow in May to meet with President Boris Yeltsin and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe.

The meeting, which was proposed by Yeltsin in January, has become the subject of the kind of debate in Washington that used to be reserved for the summit-planning decisions of the Cold War.

Among the considerations that had delayed an American decision was the prospect that Clinton’s presence at the Red Square parade with which the Russian government intends to observe the occasion might be seen as acquiescence in its current offensive in Chechnya.

Advisers to Clinton had also raised concerns that a visit to Moscow might carry with it the obligation to attend similar anniversary ceremonies in London and Paris.

What tipped the balance, administration officials said, was the view that a rebuff by Clinton would be interpreted as a slight across the former Soviet Union, which lost 20 million lives in the war against Nazi Germany.

While Russian representatives were all but excluded from last year’s commemorations of the Allied invasion of Europe, the White House appealed on Monday to Russia’s pride in announcing Clinton’s plans to travel to Moscow on May 9, which Russians celebrate as Victory Day.

It said that Clinton would be joining other world leaders “in commemorating the great contribution made by the Russian people to the defeat of Nazi Germany and its allies in the Second World War.”

The May 9-11 visit will allow for the first extended talks between Clinton and Yeltsin since last autumn, and they are likely to focus on new sources of tension between them, including the war in Chechnya and Moscow’s plans to build nuclear reactors for Iran.

The trip will also be Clinton’s first major foreign journey since Republicans took power in Congress.

That will force him to confront more directly critics like Sen. Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Republican who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and who said on Monday that the president’s planned trip was ill-advised.