Russian Threats Begin to Disturb U.S.

by Jim Lobe

Their advice follows warnings by Russian President Yeltsin that a NATO decision to send ground troops into Yugoslavia could prompt Moscow to intervene militarily in the conflict.

"I think his threat should be taken very, very seriously," said Stephen Cohen, who teaches Russian studies at New York University. "There is clearly strong and growing political pressure to do something, and Russia has any number of options."

Cohen and other Russian specialists believe Moscow will not take direct military action against NATO or seriously consider, for example, accepting Yugoslavia's bid to join an alliance with Russia and Belarus.

But Moscow might take other steps, including shipping arms to Yugoslavia and Iraq, that could seriously harm western interests.

"The Russians are weak militarily, and they would not be able to prevail over NATO on the ground, but they may start supplying weapons of mass destruction and technologies to China, India, Iran, and all kinds of rogue nations," according to Dmitri Simes, a Russia expert at the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom here.

Their talks were the first between high-level officials from both sides since Mar. 23 when Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov abruptly turned his U.S.-bound plane around in mid-Atlantic after being told that NATO might launch its air campaign while he was still in Washington. The bombing began Mar 24.

In what Albright characterised as "very frank and important discussions," she and Ivanov disagreed on NATO demands that NATO lead an international force to keep the peace in Kosovo after hostilities end and to escort the hundreds of thousands of Albanian Kosovars displaced by the conflict to their homes.

While Albright insisted that such a force had to have a NATO core, Ivanov said any international presence "requires the agreement of the leadership of Yugoslavia."

As they were meeting, Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergayev reportedly authorized the deployment of more Russian naval vessels to the Adriatic Sea to join a reconnaissance ship dispatched there early in the bombing campaign to monitor NATO actions.

He also announced that he had removed the 1400-some Russian soldiers in the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia from NATO's command and threatened to withdraw them completely, depending on developments in Yugoslavia.

But if Moscow was hoping that such moves would make the Clinton administration think twice about further escalating the war, it was disappointed.

"Now we are taking our allied campaign to the next level, with more aircraft in the region, with a British carrier joining our U.S.S Roosevelt and a French carrier in the area," Clinton said Tuesday.

The latest escalation would likely further anger the Russians, according to experts here who said the administration believes that it can either ignore Moscow, or force it to do NATO's bidding.

That assessment, according to these analysts, may be mistaken, particularly in light of the strong shift in Russian public opinion over the past year.

"Because of the economic disaster in Russia -- a disaster in which we played no small part -- there's been a steady rise in anti-American feeling that, until the bombing started, has been rather amorphous," according to Rajan Menon, a Russia expert at Lehigh University.

"Kosovo has given this amorphous anti-Americanism a concrete focus," he said.

"While nationalists and Communists, who stand to make major gains in the Duma in November's elections, are the biggest beneficiaries, liberal reformers, many of whom opposed NATO's expansion anyway, have also tacked right to keep up with public opinion."

As a result, he said, unless the bombing stops very soon, it is "inconceivable," that START 2, the long-pending treaty between the United States and Russia to reduce their nuclear arsenals which was poised to pass the Duma at the end of March, can be approved.

"The outrage against NATO is authentic," said Cohen, who added that Washington's assumption that Russia's need for western capital and a new bailout package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may not be borne out.

"So strong is the anti-Americanism at this point and so strongly do Russians associate the IMF with the U.S., that it may be politically harder for the (Yeltsin) government even to take those credits," he said.

The $4.8 billion Moscow was hoping to receive from the IMF "is the kind of money that a couple of weapons can raise from the kind of people we don't like. There are a lot of buyers lined up."

Menon is not quite so pessimistic. "The name of the game for Moscow is still debt rescheduling, and U.S. support at the IMF is essential," he said, adding that Yeltsin's more hawkish statements in recent days are designed primarily to appease the Duma.

At the same time, as long as the bombing continues, "there will be no forward movement, and whatever we want, they're not going to be very cooperative."

"We're on a very, dangerous path," according to Julianne Smith, an analyst at the British American Security Information Council.

"Primakov's turning his plane around was a very dramatic statement, and we now risk they're not turning up at the NATO summit (here) later this month. "That, in itself, will have serious negative ramifications for all of Europe."