Yeltsin Changes Stance On Nato Expansion

Dropping Russia’s growling reluctance to accept NATO as the future security framework for Europe, President Boris Yeltsin announced Thursday his country will sign a treaty with the Western defense alliance in Paris next month.

“I want to announce here that on May 27 in Paris the leaders of NATO and Russia will sign a treaty,” Yeltsin said, looking frail and slightly bemused by his own words, after a meeting with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. “So we have to hurry.”

Yeltsin has until now accepted only gentle nudging toward acceptance of NATO’s plan to expand into former Soviet satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe - even from Kohl, his best friend in the West.

NATO wants to issue the first invitations, to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, at a Madrid, Spain, summit July 8-9. Russia wants to limit the stationing of Western troops and weapons in Central and Eastern European states, but NATO is reluctant to give sweeping guarantees that would condemn new members to second-class citizenship within the alliance. NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said Wednesday that a deal with Russia might not be ready by May 27.

The idea of a treaty binding NATO to its Cold War-era enemy was first agreed to by Yeltsin and President Clinton at a February summit in Helsinki, Finland. But the night before Yeltsin met Kohl, the Russian leader’s spokesman, Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky, was still talking tough about the problems Russia had with negotiations.

After talks in this pretty, magnolia-strewn spa town, however, Yeltsin’s views seemed to have evolved dramatically. Even the urbane Kohl was not quite as upbeat as the Russian president in his assessment of the progress made at their talks.

Kohl said he was confident that with “good will on both sides” there could be a deal before the Madrid summit.

But the German leader referred repeatedly to a “document,” rather than the more formal “treaty” that Yeltsin says will be ready for signature next month, and said important differences remain to be ironed out.

The 66-year-old Yeltsin was invited to Germany to receive the “Man of the Year” prize awarded to him by the German media last year. His November heart operation prevented him from receiving it earlier.