BY CARL-ERIK ISACCSSON
STOCKHOLM - Russian president Boris Yeltsin made a two-day trip here December 2 - 3. He was accompanied by a staff of 200 people, including Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, First Vice Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, Minister of Justice Sergei Stepashin, and central bank chief Sergei Dubinin. High on the agenda was relations between Stockholm, Moscow, and the states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which border the Baltic Sea. According to the Swedish conservative daily Svenska Dagbladet, the visit's main aim was to hold back the expansion of the U.S.- led NATO military alliance to the Baltic states and perhaps even Sweden and Finland.

On October 24 Yeltsin proposed a security pact with the Baltic states. In the weeks leading up to his visit here, Swedish prime minister Goran Persson rejected this plan in interviews with the Russian press. The governments of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania also responded negatively to Yeltsin's proposal.

On the first day of his visit Yeltsin surprised his hosts by pledging that Moscow would reduce its nuclear forces by a third. The statement was immediately modified by aides, who said Yeltsin was "tired" and that the offer might be part of future arms control negotiations. The Russian legislature has not yet ratified the proposed "Start 2" nuclear arms reduction pact, and especially postponed doing so after Washington embarked on the course for expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe.

On the second day of his visit Yeltsin spoke in the Swedish parliament and stated that "from Jan. 1, 1999, Russia will unilaterally reduce - and I am saying this for the first time - by more than 40 percent its land and naval units, especially in northwest Russia." This time Yeltsin spoke from a text, and at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Russian defense minister Igor Sergeyev confirmed Yeltsin's plans for cuts in both land and naval forces. Troops would be reduced in Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland, and from the St. Petersburg area. The Russian Baltic and Northern fleets would also be reduced.

The proposal is aimed at assuring the Baltic states, Stockholm, and Helsinki that they don't need to join NATO, as well as putting political pressure on the negotiations now under way to bring the governments of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into the military alliance.

Yeltsin's proposal had repercussions in Russia. Alexander Lebed, a former secretary in the Russian security council and presidential hopeful, called it "a clumsy attempt to try to completely dismantle Russia's armed forces and the whole country with it." He declared, "How long do we need such a man sending us toward our doom before he finally resigns?"

The Swedish hosts didn't respond to Yeltsin's proposal. Stockholm has not only supported NATO's expansion into the Baltic states, but is the government in Europe that has done the most to get them into the military bloc and the European Union (EU). Swedish foreign minister Lena Hjelm-Wallén's comments demanding that the Russian government sign border treaties that had been negotiated with the regimes in Estonia and Latvia further confirmed that course.

Moscow refused to sign the border treaties after the Clinton administration launched its drive to expand NATO eastward last year, arguing that the Russian population in those states faces discrimination.

Similar questions will be posed in the upcoming negotiations over these states' membership in the European Union. After the European Commission announced its proposal for EU enlargement earlier this year, the governments of Sweden, Finland, and Denmark made a joint proposal that membership negotiations should jointly start with all 11 applicants. The European Commission had proposed opening talks just with Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia. The governments of Latvia and Lithuania are among those that have also applied for EU membership. Washington has expressed its support for including all the Baltic states in the European Union.

Helsinki has since backed off from this position, but Stockholm and Copenhagen continue to push it. At a meeting of the foreign ministers of the European Union late in November, it was apparent that Bonn and London oppose starting the membership negotiations jointly, while other governments are positive. These include those around the Mediterranean Sea, who see this as a way to stall the enlargement of the EU into eastern Europe to safeguard their agricultural and regional subsidies. A compromise is expected to be worked out in time for the European Union meeting in Luxembourg December 12 - 13.

During Yeltsin's stay in Stockholm his delegation also met Swedish big-business representatives, who worked out some deals like with the telephone company Ericsson and on trucks and busses from Volvo. Yeltsin floated a proposal to build a pipeline for natural gas from Russia through Sweden and to the European continent, but it got a cold reception from Swedish authorities who see Norway, a NATO member, as a better deliverer of natural gas.

Carl-Erik Isacsson is a member of the metalworkers union in Sodertalje, Sweden  
 
 
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