The New York Times

OP-ED

Tuesday, March 30, 1999

RUSSIA'S TRUE INTERESTS

By Strobe Talbott

(Strobe Talbott is the Deputy Secretary of State)

Washington - Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov of Russia is due in Belgrade today, with the stated purpose of stopping NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia and laying the groundwork for a peaceful settlement of the crisis.

As Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stressed to Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov when they talked by telephone yesterday, the precondition for a return to diplomacy in an end to the frenzied slaughter that Serbian soldiers, police officers and paramilitary gangs are carrying out against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. If that is Mr. Primakov's message to President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia today, the mission may help. If not, it won't.

As benefits a democracy, Russia's foreign policy reflects attitudes on its home front. Russian public and parliamentary opinion across a broad spectrum has been greatly riled by NATO's action. A number of democratic reformers, including three who plan to visit Washington later this week, have criticized the alliance for fueling the flames of Russian ultranationalism. Because NATO was founded 50 years ago to deter the Soviet Union, may Russians react viscerally to its continuing existence, its enlargement and, now, its resort to force against another country with strong historical, ethnic and religious ties to Russia.

However, there would be something perverse about Russia's appearing to side with Belgrade regime in the current conflict. During the past decade, Russia and Serbia have been diametrically opposed in handling their post-Communist transition. Since the Soviet Union dissolved, eruptions of bloodshed and repression like the one in Chechnya have been exceptions to the rule. By and large, the emergence of 15 new independent states have been remarkably peaceful, and many of those states, notably including Russia itself, have moved quickly to join the democratic community.

By contrast, the breakup of Yugoslavia has been an ongoing horror, replete with war, irredentism, mass graves, charred villages, concentration camps and waves of refugees. It is worth pondering how much better off Europe would be today if Serbia had followed the example of Russia, Ukraine and the other former Soviet republics. Conversely, it is not hard to image how much worse off the whole world be if anything like the meltdown of the old Yugoslavia had occurred across the 11 time zones of the Soviet Union, with 30,000 nuclear weapons in the mix.

While the Unites States and Russia have had their disagreements, they have accomplished a great deal together on the basis of mutual interest, including in the Balkans. Our troops are still serving in Bosnia. Along with Britain, Italy, France and Germany, the United States and Russia hammered out a deal that the Kosovo Albanians, at least, have accepted. In his rejection of international efforts to end the crisis peacefully, President Milosevic has violated an agreement he made with President Boris Yeltin and repeatedly defied appeals from the very men - Mr. Primakov and Mr. Ivanov - whom he plans to receive today.

From more than one year, diplomats from the United States, Russia and other countries conducted patient, peaceful diplomacy while Belgrade brutalized - and radicalized - Kosovo.

The escalation of the atrocities since then has crystallized the challenge: this is barbarism in our own time, in the heart of Europe, on the eve of the 21st century. It is hard to believe that Russians of any stripe would want to defend, or identify themselves with, an abomination against the most elemental standards of decency and a repudiation of much that the Russian people themselves have achieved since they put soviet Communism behind them.