Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 5, 1993 TAG: 9304050098
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA LENGTH: Long
NO THREATS - JUST A BILL AMONG PALS
This may well be remembered as the first quality-of-life summit - a couple of world leaders up to their necks in debt, dwelling more on materialism than on the military, and on standards of living rather than life and death.The summit had all the drama of a bankrupt businessman applying for a bridge loan from the president of a failing S&L. In part, this was due to the fundamental change in the relationship between Moscow and Washington since the end of the Cold War. Before, Russian leaders presented their American counterparts with a threat. Now, they just present them with a bill.
As Yeltsin delicately put it at the closing news conference: "Before, at summits, we discussed disassembling confrontational structures. But here we talked about building new structures. This was the first economically oriented meeting of the two great powers."
But this summit was also on the dull side because the two leaders scripted it that way. Yeltsin made it clear from the moment he stepped off his Aeroflot jetliner that he did not want this summit to appear to be what it really was: a proud Russian leader coming to the West with tin cup in hand. Because if it was, his opponents back home, already painting him as a lap dog of Western capitalists, would have a field day.
As Yeltsin straightforwardly remarked when asked if $1 billion in American aid was enough: "Too little is not good because it is not enough to enable you to solve problems, whereas too much also could be bad, because it can be used by the Communists to target us. The opposition will say we are enshackled by the West."
Clinton and his party, sensitive to Yeltsin's predicament, played along. In what had to be a first for a Russian-American summit, an American briefer actually went out of his way to tell reporters about friction between the leaders in their one-on-one meeting, to make clear back home in Moscow that Yeltsin was standing tough.
The White House communications director, George Stephanopoulos, told reporters at the evening briefing Saturday that Yeltsin had brought up "irritants" in the relationship between the two nations, everything from trade problems to the fact that an American submarine recently bumped into a Russian one in the Barents Sea. Stephanopoulos went out of his way to note that Clinton had apologized to Yeltsin for the incident. Hear that, Moscow?
Clinton, acting like a sensitive nephew who did not want to embarrass his uncle when he comes for a loan, also never suggested that there was any asymmetry in his relationship with Yeltsin, or that this summit was focused heavily on one-sided aid.
When reporters asked Yeltsin whether American aid would make a difference, he responded, "You know, it's always useful to help a friend, especially if a friend goes through a difficult period."
At that point Clinton interjected: "I just was going to say, I don't view this as a talk about aid. This is a talk about a long-term partnership."
This stress on parity at times was taken to amusing, but revealing, lengths. When a senior American official briefed reporters Sunday about the details of the aid package for Russia, he began by saying, "President Yeltsin and President Clinton agreed on a series of American initiatives to aid Russia."
Details of the assistance package itself dominated the first two meetings of the summit and the old security-foreign affairs agenda seemed almost like an afterthought, reserved for the last session Sunday.
The U.S. government's press handout about the substance of the summit also reflected this turnabout. It began with pages describing the new loans, housing units, energy, environmental programs and trade and investment initiatives that the Clinton administration would be offering Russia. Tacked on at the end were a couple of pages about the fate of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties.
Even the local Vancouver newspapers looked at the summit more as a business convention than something that might affect global stability. The papers noted that the visiting diplomats and journalists were expected to spend $3 million around town on phones, food and entertainment.
The daily summit newsletter passed out to all the hotels in Vancouver by a local civic booster group led with the ultimate post-Cold War news story Sunday morning: "Is there life after the Summit for Vancouver's business community once the two days of attention and excitement are over? Experience says yes. Tourism officials estimate that Vancouver received more than $70 million in free advertising worldwide during the buildup to the summit."
Cities around the world may soon start bidding for Russian-American summits the way they do for the Olympics.
But Clinton also had his reasons for wanting to keep this meeting, and talk of American aid for Russia, relatively muted. Americans generally like to see their president out leading the free world, but they are not crazy about seeing their president doling out foreign aid, especially in a season of budgetary cutbacks at home. Clinton has been reading the polls, which are universally negative about lavishing foreign aid on Russia.
Clinton walked a delicate tightrope during these two days, wanting his $1.6 billion aid package for Yeltsin to look like a lot in the eyes of his Russian supporters, a little in the eyes of his Russian opponents, a lot in the eyes of America's Western allies, but not too much in the eyes of American voters.
"Both of them needed to low-key this thing," said Robert Strauss, a former ambassador to Moscow. "For Clinton it was wise and for Yeltsin it was wise. Yeltsin could not afford to look like he came running with a tin cup, because he has nothing going for him at home. For Clinton, the duller the better, because he has got to go home and worry about Congress."