Gore Faces Tough Issues In Russia Mir Safety, Bill Restricting Missionaries Cloud Talks

U.S. Vice President Al Gore escaped domestic campaign-financing controversies with a four-day visit to Russia, only to be confronted Monday with trouble in one of Washington’s most important foreign relationships over such vital issues as nuclear safety, human rights and the Mir space station.

During the first day of talks on U.S.-Russian relations, Gore conveyed to Russian Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin the United States’ concerns about Kremlin policies that have slowed business investments and raised questions about Russia’s commitment to democracy.

Dominant among the conflicts and frictions marring the twice-yearly meeting of the U.S.-Russian Commission on Economic and Technological Cooperation chaired by Gore and Chernomyrdin was the Moscow leadership’s adoption last week of a bill that would hamper the work of foreign missionaries in Russia if it is signed into law by President Boris N. Yeltsin, as is widely expected.

“I tried very hard to explain why we Americans feel so strongly about this,” Gore said of the law that has been criticized as a return to Soviet-style religious repression.

Gore said Chernomyrdin seemed sympathetic to U.S. concerns and that the legislation could still be amended. But he conceded that there are no indications that Yeltsin, whose office wrote the revised law after vetoing an earlier version in July, is pondering a retreat.

“At no time did I hear anything which would make me feel comfortable in saying to you that there is a possibility that he’ll veto it,” Gore told reporters at the talks at a government retreat in this pine-forested village south of Moscow.

The troubled Mir space station was also prominent on the agenda, and another computer failure aloft early Monday underscored worries that Mir has become too risky to host U.S. astronauts. The U.S. shuttle Atlantis is set to blast off Thursday for a linkup with Mir.