Gore Visit Buries NATO Tensions

The United States and Russia openly proclaimed Friday that their bitter public spat over NATO and European security is history, and announced that future questions on similar topics will be handled with a new sense of cooperation.


U.S. Vice President Al Gore, in Moscow for a series of meetings with Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, said he met with President Boris Yeltsin on Friday morning and discussed a range of topics, including NATO and the war in separatist Chechnya.


Toward the end of a press conference on the results of their negotiations, Gore virtually dismissed the notion that there is any tension between the two countries.


"The discussions we have had here this week between Prime Minister Chernomyrdin and myself, and with President Yeltsin, have taken us a major step forward, and we can say with great confidence that the U.S.-Russia partnership is in very good condition," Gore said.


Chernomyrdin was less florid, but equally resolute. "Despite some inevitable friction, our partnership is an active one," he said. "Russia and the United States have learned to build their relations on the basis of mutual consideration, respect for (our) interests, and respect for the future, our people and our countries."


Pressed on the situation in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, where Russian troops have taken positions around the capital city of Grozny, Gore stuck to the Western line of noninterference. He added that he and Yeltsin spoke very little about the issue.


Slowly, as if reading from a script, Gore intoned, "We are following events in Chechnya. It is an internal affair. We hope it can be resolved through negotiations, as I know all involved do."


It was very the external affair of NATO's expansion into the former Soviet bloc, however, that raised the Russians' ire last week at a security conference in Budapest. Gore said that was the topic of extensive discussion with Yeltsin.


"We had a very full and very productive discussion about the future of NATO and the future of the U.S.-Russian partnership, the future of the relations between Russia and NATO, the future of the Partnership for Peace, and the relation between all of these processes," Gore said. "We agreed that the prime minister and I will continue to discuss these questions (as part of) a strong and healthy partnership."


Gore said the Russian president looked "vigorous" and "healthy" after recent surgery on his nose. "There are no lingering, visible signs of the minor surgery he went through," Gore said. The Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission, as the working group between those two men is called, concluded an elaborate array of agreements and projects this week. The two men signed accords on environmental protection and space cooperation, and subcommittees signed statements on everything from nuclear warhead safety to the monitoring of ocean temperatures.


The commission's main purpose, though, is to foster economic and technological links between the two countries. To that end, delegations also discussed economic reforms that can help stimulate foreign investment in Russia.


Later Friday, a panel of Americans and Russians signed an agreement creating a joint venture between Hamilton Standard, a Connecticut-based aircraft-components company, and Nauka, the leading Russian manufacturer of airplane climate-control systems.


The joint venture, part of a larger defense conversion effort, is supported by both the U.S. Defense Enterprise Fund and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. The signing was attended by U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry, who came as part of the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission but also has had talks with Russian Defense Ministry officials.


In a sign of the improved relations between Mocow and Washington in the framework of NATO, Perry said Russian representatives would attend a meeting of NATO officials in The Hague on Monday where the UN mission in Bosnia will be discussed, Reuters reported.