Russia to Albright: Never Say Never

MOSCOW: Faced with the likelihood of NATO expansion, Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov spent a Friday meeting with Madeleine Albright trying to win as many concessions as possible before giving in. Russia has begun to weaken, but still remains officially opposed to NATO's eastward move. "We are still negatively disposed," Primakov said after the meeting. But, in a significant departure from earlier claims, he added that Russia now wants only "a voice, not a veto" in the NATO alliance. Primakov has taken a hard line toward NATO expansion ever since taking over Andrei Kozyrev, whom Russian critics had accused of being too soft toward the West. But his contention that that NATO expansion would trigger a wave of communist-nationalist outrage that will weaken reform has worn thin in the face of polls that show average Russians don't care about the issue. Albright arrived armed with a package of proposals to make the accession of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to the western alliance more palatable to the Yeltsin government. Included were a charter to link Russia to the alliance, unilateral arms reductions and a joint NATO-Russian brigade for peacekeeping operations. "It is no longer us versus you or you versus us," she told a news conference. "We are on the same side." Albright later met with a pale and wan Boris Yeltsin, and told reporters that the ailing President seemed "on top of his game," "knowing exactly what he wanted to achieve," and fully up to meeting President Clinton for a March summit in Helsinki.