
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, December 3, 1993                   TAG: 9312030139
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: BRUSSELS, BELGIUM                                LENGTH: Medium

NATO SET TO ADD EX-SOVIET STATES

Foreign ministers of NATO set the stage Thursday for Russia and other former communist states to become members of the alliance eventually, but some ministers warned that they could not agree to membership for Ukraine until it gives up the nuclear weapons it has possessed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

At a preparatory session for a January NATO summit meeting, the ministers gave an unofficial blessing to President Clinton's proposed "Partnership for Peace," which would enable former members of the Warsaw Pact and former Soviet republics to participate in joint military exercises, training and planning next year with forces of the 16 NATO members.

The plan, expected to win the governmental leaders' approval next month, is an attempt to balance competing concerns over long-term peace and security in post-Cold War Europe.

Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are urgently pursuing full membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. With only partnership status, these countries would not be entitled to the automatic security provisions of the charter, and the question of their gaining full membership would be postponed indefinitely.

Those provisions are intended primarily to avoid alarming Russia by extending NATO to its borders and exposing Russian President Boris Yeltsin to new charges that his friendship with the West has been misplaced. Russia has opposed NATO membership for ex-members of the Warsaw Pact. Western diplomats term it unlikely that Russia would want to join.

NATO faces another problem with Ukraine, whose possession of an estimated 170 nuclear warheads ranks it behind only the United States and Russia as a nuclear power. Despite assurances from Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk that his country intends to dismantle the weapons, as called for by the START 2 agreement, and to comply fully with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Ukraine has failed thus far to do so.

That led some NATO ministers to argue Thursday that Ukraine should be barred from the Partnership from Peace until the country ends what appears to be a tactic of forcing the West to provide financial aid as the price for compliance.

"I don't see how Ukraine could benefit from membership under present circumstances," said Belgian Foreign Minister Willy Claes, chairman of the European Community. Asked if that meant Ukraine could expect a blackball if it seeks to join, Claes said, "That is so."

by CNB