President Boris Yeltsin`s announcement Wednesday of major cuts in Russia`s arsenal of nuclear and conventional weapons set the stage for his most important foreign journey, a trip vital to securing further cooperation and help from the West.
The reductions, which included a commitment to stop aiming nuclear warheads at any targets in the U.S., were the most sweeping efforts by this country so far to cut arms spending and offer its beleaguered citizens hope of a better life.
Coming just hours after President Bush revealed cuts in U.S. defense spending in his State of the Union message, Yeltsin`s move appeared an attempt in part to answer Western concerns about providing massive aid to the collapsing economy of what was the Soviet Union while the country continued major spending on armaments.
Yeltsin`s taped speech was broadcast on Russian television as he was meeting in the Kremlin with U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III. It was Yeltsin`s first public appearance in Moscow since dropping out of sight earlier this week, an absence that revived concerns about his health and his authority.
To the contrary, Yeltsin impressed American officials with both his air of authority and a command of complex arms control issues, presenting his new initiative to Baker without need to refer to notes.
”He knew it, and he knew it cold,” said a senior American official.
U.S. officials said this was a striking departure from previous talks, in which the Russian leader spoke in sweeping generalities but seemed to have limited grasp of details.
His conduct Wednesday is likely to stimulate a reappraisal of Yeltsin. Some American officials in the past have considered Yeltsin an intellectual lightweight and a transitory figure.
After the talks, Baker said Yeltsin`s initiative ”reflects the new political realities” in which the U.S. and Russia now share a common aim of sharply reducing the weapons built up over the 40-year Cold War.
Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev told reporters Russian missiles would no longer be aimed at American cities or military targets because, ”We no longer view the United States as a foe.” But Kozyrev said that was a
”political decision” that is yet to be implemented, and Baker was non-committal when asked whether the U.S. would reciprocate.
In his address, Yeltsin made it clear he was promising Russians their share of the ”peace dividend.”
”Sticking to these principles will make it possible to save considerable resources,” he said. ”They will be channeled to meeting civilian needs and implementing reform.”
For Yeltsin, who has clearly put on the mantle shed by Mikhail Gorbachev when the Soviet Union collapsed last December, his nationally televised address Wednesday provided him with a first opportunity to act as the undisputed leader of a nuclear superpower on the world stage.
Yeltsin was scheduled to leave Moscow Thursday for London at the start of a three-day, three-nation tour that will include a weekend meeting with Bush at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md. He also will attend a big-power summit at the United Nations Friday and visit Canada on his way home.
Officials in the U.S., Germany and other Western nations have expressed concerns about justifying the infusion of large quantities of aid to this country, while it was still spending large sums on weapons.
But Yeltsin staked out the high ground Wednesday and sought to allay these fears, sometimes using language reminiscent of Gorbachev`s earlier speeches on international policy.
”Nuclear weapons and other means of mass annihilation in the world must be liquidated,” he said in outlining the cuts and savings he pledged would be used to improve the lot of millions of people who now suffer from desperate shortages and hyperinflation.
Among the most important steps he announced were further reductions in the amount of money the Russian government will spend on weapons.
Yeltsin said Russia would halve the amount of armaments it would purchase this year. Coming on the heels of a 30 percent cut in 1991, that amounted to an overall reduction of 80 percent in only two years.
Yeltsin also said Russia had decided to fulfill requirements agreed to along with the U.S. under terms of the START arms-reduction agreement within three years, rather than seven years.
These promises of rapid cuts worried some arms experts, who said Russia lacked the financial resources and the technical means to carry out what Yeltsin had pledged-and Yeltsin clearly anticipates receiving Western money and expertise to undertake the arms reductions.
Yeltsin, aware of the need to keep the military on his side during the vast political and economic changes under way in the new Commonwealth of Independent States, this week flew unexpectedly to southern Russia to meet with commanders of the Black Sea Fleet.
He used the visit as an opportunity to promise the military that part of the money saved by reducing weapons purchases would be spent on improving salaries and living conditions for members of the armed forces.
