Clinton helpless amid the rumble from Russia's hardliners

As the US President arrives in Moscow, American leaders are asking who really wields power in Russia these days? With the nation in political chaos, it is no time to be lecturing on the need for tough economic measures, says JOHN SIMPSON

THEY may be the two most powerful men in the world, but their political weakness is plain for all to see. Their summit, long delayed, gives Boris Yeltsin a last, faint aura of importance; even though Bill Clinton's team will be looking round the whole time in puzzlement to see who's really got the power in Russia nowadays.

Is it Viktor Chernomyrdin, whom the Duma rejected yesterday as prime minister by a humiliating margin of 251 votes against and only 94 in favour?

Is it Boris Bere-zovsky, the billionaire financier and media boss who instructed Yeltsin to sack his reformist government and give Cher-nomyrdin the job of forming a new one? Or is it Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist Party leader who seems to have Yeltsin by the throat, and is growing in power and public support all the time?

Yeltsin's weakness represents the ruins of US policy towards Russia.

Keeping him in power was the only real idea Washington had; there was no one else, and Yeltsin tried to make sure it stayed that way. Now that he is dead in the water, President Clinton has to try to find another figure to support.

That can only be Viktor Chernomyrdin. Yesterday's vote against him was a stunning setback, but it isn't necessarily final. Last March, when the young, bewildered-looking Sergei Kiriyenko was appointed prime minister, the Duma rejected him on the first vote as well, only to agree to his appointment the second time around. The makings of a deal between Chernomyrdin and the Duma were tantalizingly close over the weekend, and it only failed because the Communists calculated they could hold out for more concessions.

BUT is Chernomyrdin really the right man for the Americans?

True, as prime minister for most of the past six years, he represents continuity with Yeltsin. Yet that's no real recommendation. During this period Russia has consistently failed to take the tough decisions the Americans wanted, in order to put the economy back on its feet.

The only reason Cher-nomyrdin has now been pitchforked back into the prime minister's office is that the big oligarchies in Russia think he won't do anything to damage their interests; close down big businesses that have long been running on empty, for instance, or make Russian companies pay tax, or allow dodgy banks to go to the wall.

"We should tell him," Clinton said at Martha's Vineyard last Friday, "that if they'll be strong and do the disciplined, hard things they have to do to reform the country and the economy and get through this dark night, we'll stick with them."

But this is mere rhetoric.

The Russian government won't be strong, and it scarcely ever has been. In the six years since it started getting massive loans from the IMF, Yeltsin's Russia has barely honoured in full a single promise it was obliged to make as part of the deal.

And the Americans, in spite of their tough words in public, have been extraordinarily feeble too. They knew perfectly well that the Russians were just taking the money without doing enough to justify it, and yet they kept pressurising the IMF to hand over the money anyway. Poor little Sergei Kiriyenko may have looked feeble as prime minister, but at least he tried to do things that were required to put the Russian economy on a proper footing.

Now he's gone, no one else is even going to attempt it. And the Americans will have no alternative but to stand around and pretend everything is going according to plan. The fact is, Boris Yeltsin has the strength of his weakness. He has consistently been able to warn Bill Clinton, with some justice, that if there is too much pressure on him someone far worse will come to power instead. By voting down Chernomyrdin in the Duma yesterday, the Communists showed he wasn't exaggerating. And they aren't the only contenders. There are serious rumblings in the armed forces, and the nationalist strong man, General Alexander Lebed, is waiting in his fastness at Krasnoyarsk for the call to take power.

SO this is the worst time for Bill Clinton to come to Moscow and lecture Russia on the need for tough economic measures. People in this country feel they've been through that already, at the beginning of the Nineties, and they dread a return to the savage cutbacks and hyperinflation of those days. The extremists on one side or the other would certainly reap the benefit if the next government here even thought of trying it. All the Americans can do is stand by helplessly and watch events unfold.

No doubt there'll be attempts during the next couple of days to make this summit look good. Something could, for instance, be cobbled together on arms control. The reason this summit has been so delayed (the last one was in March 1997) is that the Duma has never ratified the START-2 agreement, signed in 1993, and Washington thought it could force through the ratification by refusing to meet Yeltsin. Eventually, though, Clinton had to give in and come anyway: that kind of pressure never works here.

In the past it was always the Americans who wanted to force down the number of missiles each side possessed.

Now, though, the Russian nuclear arsenal is decaying at such a rate that instead of the 6,680 warheads Russia is at present credited with (the US figure is put at 7,986) the figure could soon be down to a couple of thousand. The Russians now want bigger cuts, to lessen the growing disparity.

But if the two sides trumpet arms control or international co- operation as being the major achievement at this summit, then you'll know that nothing really important has been done.

Bill Clinton has enough problems without being accused, in that awful self-regarding Washington phrase, of "losing" Russia.

He doesn't dare push Boris Yeltsin around too much.

Otherwise he might find himself having to deal with someone much, much worse. lJohn Simpson is the BBC's World Affairs Editor

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