THE VICE PRESIDENT

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Some National Security Council aides are grumbling that they'd like to pull the plug on the twice-a-year meetings AL GORE has with Russian Premier VIKTOR CHERNOMYRDIN. The sessions, they say, have lately produced few results. Chernomyrdin has dropped in the Kremlin pecking order and can no longer deliver much. But the Veep, who's in Russia this week for his ninth Gore-Chernomyrdin commission meeting, is still high on the confabs. In past get-togethers Gore has hammered out agreements on unglamorous issues other politicians avoid, like environmental cleanup and health-care exchanges. This week's meeting will have "no single newsworthy event" to dazzle reporters, he admits. But the two men were to tackle such thorny subjects as Russian arms sales to Iran, the Mir space station and allegations that Moscow continues to test nuclear weapons. More important, the commission gives Gore a chance to huddle with a foreign leader and, even better, escape the campaign-finance scandal in Washington.

--By Douglas Waller/Washington