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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 5, 1994                   TAG: 9401050097
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

ADDING EAST EUROPEANS TO NATO CALLED PERILOUS

Anthony Lake's comments came as the administration resisted pressure from new East European allies who want the United States to speed up plans to offer NATO membership to former Warsaw Pact countries.

Lake, speaking a week before Clinton's trip to Eastern Europe, said the "evolutionary" process backed by the president "avoids drawing new lines between East and West and in Europe now."

Such dividing lines could strengthen the hands of the nationalists in Russia and "destabilize states to the east," he said. "It could become a self-fulfilling prophecy of pessimism about Russia, and this would not be in the interests either of NATO or indeed of the states of Central and Eastern Europe."

The White House conceded there is "some debate about the details" of what the administration is calling a Partnership for Peace. It would offer East European countries military cooperation with NATO but envision full membership as years away.

Clinton will outline that proposal next week at a NATO summit at which the principal topic will be the pleas for admission to the Western alliance.

Even before the strong showing by Russian nationalists in last month's parliamentary elections, U.S. officials were sensitive to Moscow's concerns about NATO's offering membership to former Warsaw Pact nations such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

Too sensitive, according to Polish President Lech Walesa, who called NATO's go-slow approach "shortsighted and irresponsible."

In an interview with The Washington Post, Walesa said Poland has no choice but to accept whatever the West offers. "But we don't forecast anything good for this concept," he said of Partnership for Peace.

But the Clinton administration worries that granting East European countries full NATO membership could harm Russian President Boris Yeltsin by strengthening the hand of Russian ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who has argued for re-creating the Soviet empire and reasserting its domination over former satellites.

Gen. John Shalikashvili, a former NATO commander and now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told East European journalists that "Russia does not have a veto over who will join or not join, who will participate or not participate in a Partnership for Peace."

But the general also noted that Russia is going through "a very difficult period" and he warned against setting up new divisions in Europe "by design or somehow inadvertently."