KUNICHINA GORA -- President Boris Yeltsin toured the disputed Estonian-Russian border Wednesday and defiantly proclaimed that Russia "will not give up a single centimeter of Russian land."


Estonians had a different view.


"Russian president visits occupied Estonian territory," one newspaper headline read.


Yeltsin's visit, with a high-powered delegation including Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev and border guards chief Andrei Nikolayev, was clearly intended to demonstrate Russia's seriousness in claiming the disputed territory.


Moscow began marking the loose border with tiny Estonia earlier this year after complaining about the passage of illegal weapons, drugs and other smuggled goods. Estonia, which has had tense relations with Moscow since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, says Russia is exaggerating the problem and cutting into Estonian land.


Russia is laying barbed wire and planting posts along 250 kilometers of border, in some cases cutting farms, church parishes and backyards in half.


"This border has been, is and will be Russian, and we won't give away a single centimeter to anyone, no matter who makes such claims -- not on any account," Yeltsin said after arriving by limousine in the border town of Kunichina Gora.


He promised funds for a school in the town, which was built for border guards and customs officials, several dozen families in all. The president met with local officers, and viewed icons and other art objects seized from smugglers.


Nikolayev said 682 border-guard posts have been built.


Kozyrev called Yeltsin's trip "a friendly visit concerning relations with neighbors, which can be seen as extending a hand for a mutual handshake."


But in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, officials saw it as a giant neighbor throwing its weight around. "Russia is simply relying on the old proverb administration had to overcome numerous legal and political hurdles, including negotiating a purchase price with Kazakhstan, winning the approval of Moscow and overcoming initial opposition by the governor of Tennessee.


A team of nuclear engineers and military personnel was dispatched last month to a nuclear facility in Ulba, a remote mountain city 800 miles northeast of the Kazakh capital of Almaty.


After several weeks of processing, the material was picked up last weekend, placed aboard two C-5 military cargo planes and flown to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The material was trucked Monday and Tuesday to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Tennessee. There it is eventually to be blended with low-enriched uranium and fabricated into fuel rods for civilian nuclear reactors -- all under international monitoring, officials said.


Neither Perry nor other officials who conducted the Pentagon news conference mentioned any sum for the U.S. assistance except a $3 million price tag for airlifting the materials to the United States and trucking them on to storage in Tennessee.


The operation was kept secret to help safeguard the uranium from possible theft, both in the Kazakh warehouse and while it was being transported to Oak Ridge. It is being disclosed now because the material is considered to be out of harm's way, officials said.


The stage for Project Sapphire was set in September, when the Clinton administration declared it was prepared to "pursue the purchase of highly enriched uranium from the former Soviet Union and other countries and its conversion to peaceful use'' as a way to prevent illicit sale or theft of the material.


The initiative left the door open for the Kazakh government to approach William Courtney, the U.S. ambassador in Almaty, in February with an offer to sell Washington an estimated 600 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium being stored with minimal security in Ulba.


According to a source privy to the reports of U.S. officials sent to investigate Kazakhstan's offer, the material was being stored in a warehouse "with a big padlock, like the kind you see on Saturday morning cartoon shows."


Washington's initial reaction to the Kazakh offer was nonetheless unenthusiastic, several officials said. Some officials, particularly at the Department of Energy, "wanted the Russians to take it" because of the legal, financial, and logistical headaches associated with bringing it to the United States, one official said.


The State Department was also concerned the deal could spark resentment in Russia, where the highly enriched uranium was produced. But when Vice President Al Gore discussed it with Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin during a meeting in Washington last summer, Chernomyrdin gave it his blessing. In fact, according to Kaurov, the Nuclear Power Ministry spokesman, Kazakhstan had already approached Russia and asked Moscow to buy the uranium, but Moscow had declined.


The next task for the United States was to negotiate a purchase price. Kazakhstan, one official said, initially affixed a value to the uranium "many times" its market value, particularly given that some of the uranium was alloyed with other metals and had no major commercial value. Almaty had to be persuaded to accept what officials described as a secret payment of several million dollars.


Finally, Tennessee Governor Ned McWherter had concerns about letting the material be stored at Oak Ridge, prompted in part by a fear that the shipment was the tip of an iceberg.


McWherter was eventually convinced "this was in our national security interest," one official said.





-- AP and Reuters contributed to this report.