ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 21, 1996 TAG: 9604220052
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MOSCOW
SOURCE: Cox News Service
Half a century into the atomic age, Russia and the Group of Seven industrial nations agreed Saturday to accept a ban on all future nuclear tests, from H-bombs down to micro-warheads with ``zero yield.''
``Today, we took yet another step back from the nuclear precipice,'' President Clinton said after Russia became the last of the Big Eight powers to sign on to a tough ``zero yield'' definition in a test ban treaty to be signed at the United Nations in September.
Leaders of the G-7 industrialized democracies then deferred to Russia's President Boris Yeltsin to persuade China to join the big powers in a worldwide atomic test treaty.
Yeltsin told Clinton and visiting heads of state from Germany, France, Britain, Japan, Italy and Canada that he would try to wrap up the deal when he visits China next week on a trip that had to be canceled last November after the 65-year-old Russian leader's second heart attack.
``We agreed,'' Yeltsin told reporters, ``that the necessary work will be conducted with China to persuade them to sign this treaty so that it would be a comprehensive and eternal one.''
Since the first American atomic explosion at Alamogordo, N.M., in July 1945, the United States has conducted about 1,060 atomic tests, the Russians about 715, the French about 200, and the British and Chinese about 45 each.
``They made some meaningful progress,'' said American nuclear skeptic Thomas Cochran, a visiting scientist from the Natural Resources Defense Council. ``But there are still some loose ends to be tied up in terms of what is permitted in laboratory experiments.''
After extracting Yeltsin's last-minute agreement to ``zero yield,'' Clinton and the other summit leaders went out of their way to avoid embarrassing Yeltsin before his impending June election on a range of other nuclear issues on the agenda.
President Jacques Chirac of France went so far as to claim that Russia no longer has any problems of unsafe nuclear reactors and unpoliced stocks of nuclear ingredients.
``Perhaps somebody did say such things four, five years ago,'' Chirac said, ``but today nobody says such things, because it is absurd.''
Yeltsin said not one of the other seven summiteers pressed him to cancel the sale of nuclear-reactor technology to Iran, which had been a major American objective.
When Clinton was asked later whether the Russian reactor deal undercut the nuclear summit, he answered: ``Yes, it is a bad idea; no, it does not undercut the summit.''
After the summit, Clinton strolled through Red Square, bought a loaf of bran bread for about 50 cents on Nikolskaya Street and listened to an 83-year-old woman ask what to do about her alcoholic son.
``In my family, I have many people with the same problem,'' the president was overheard to console her.
In general, Clinton said he found the people he encountered ``pretty positive and upbeat,'' attributing that to spring weather and a growing economy in Moscow.
At a news conference, Clinton again pressed for continued reform in Russia and spoke fondly of his relations with Yeltsin's Russia. He even referred to Russia and America as ``allies,'' an upgrading of the usual terminology that the two nations are ``friends'' or ``full partners.''
But Clinton refused to endorse outright Yeltsin's re-election bid against a Communist candidate, Gennady Zyuganov, who narrowly leads Yeltsin in polls for the Russian election just seven weeks away.
``No one can predict the future, but I think on balance, the Russian people have been about the business of defining their greatness as they look to the future and not to the past,'' Clinton said.
After holding talks with Yeltsin today, Clinton is expected to meet Zyuganov as part of a roundtable of various Russian political figures. Clinton denied any strategy to keep an ``open door'' in the event Yeltsin loses, characterizing the session as typical presidential practice abroad.
Chirac was even more blatant in polishing Yeltsin's image, suggesting that Russia has a good chance to be admitted as a full member of the worldwide club of leading industrial nations at the next G-7 summit in France in late June, 10 days after the first round of the Russian presidential election.
Chirac told journalists that because of ``the personality'' of Yeltsin, political issues already are discussed in the framework of the G-8, though Russia still must work through economic problems before joining formally.
``Not everyone agrees, but in view of the ability of Boris Nikolayevich to convince others, there is every reason to believe that the problems will be settled,'' the French conservative said.
LENGTH: Medium: 87 linesby CNB