Congress Memo Implores Boost for Russian Aid

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government's high-profile, big-dollar program of economic aid to Russia is "simply inadequate in its strategy, its intensity and its implementation," congressional majority and minority leaders have complained in a private memo to President Bill Clinton's top foreign policy advisers. Representatives Richard Gephardt and Robert Michel, said officials in Washington are following "business-as-usual" bureaucratic procedures in a slow-moving, diffuse aid program, when urgent, focused action is needed to avert a political catastrophe in a destitute Russia. Accepting much of the criticism as valid, the administration is searching for a "tsar" who could begin to deliver on Clinton's commitment to help Russia's transformation to democracy and a market economy. But the first two people approached about the job, former Representatives Matthew McHugh and Stephen Solarz, both from New York, turned it down, officials said. After visiting Russia in April, Gephardt and Michel said they concluded "there remains a yawning gap between America's good intentions and the actual performance of our assistance programs." In a strongly worded memo to Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Secretary of Defense William Perry and White House national security adviser Anthony Lake, Gephardt and Michel said: "A strong sense of urgency -- of potential international crisis and of our immediate obligation to avert such a crisis -- is conspicuously absent in the delivery of our assistance to Russia," despite the Clinton team's repeated statements that the program is one of the administration's higher priorities. The two congressional leaders said the program is "strikingly insufficient," "at best embarrassing and at worst destructive." They urged the appointment of a politically powerful, high-profile coordinator who could cut the bureaucratic red tape of a "business-as-usual" Washington and get quick results. That is the type of person the administration is seeking, officials said. "A lot of the criticisms are sound -- these are not carping criticisms," said Thomas Simons Jr., coordinator of assistance to the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union, a career diplomat who would be replaced by the proposed new appointee.He said the aid program, which encompasses work done by 12 U.S. government agencies, would "benefit from having a bigfoot ... someone who speaks political language and is perceived to have access to the president."Washington committed more than $2 billion in aid to the former Soviet republics this fiscal year, not counting a separate fund set up to help Russia and Ukraine dismantle nuclear weapons. Congress appropriated the funds in a tight budget year in response to administration pleas to bolster the economic reforms of President Boris Yeltsin. The administration has asked for an additional $900 million in fiscal 1995. The House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, while approving that amount last month, also said in its report on the bill it "fears that the situation in Russia is far more urgent than is reflected in the administration of the assistance program." Gephardt said in an interview: "This is the greatest challenge of our lifetime. It's the most difficult civil and social transformation ever attempted, in my view. We can't just sit around and wring our hands" over the difficulty of doing business in Russia."We want action, intensity, focus," so the Russians can see progress and understand their sacrifice is worthwhile, he said. "The Gephardt report is absolutely correct," said Thomas Dine, who joined the U.S. Agency for International Development in March as assistant administrator for Eastern Europe and Russia. "The stuff is scattered, the program lacks focus," a situation he attributed to a decision by the administration of the then president, George Bush, to pump money into Russia using "a shotgun rather than a rifle." Gephardt and Michel recommended that in addition to appointing a high-powered director, the administration target five cities or regions for concentrated efforts to promote transition to a market economy and provide seed capital for entrepreneurs, rather than "trying to do all things for all people."