ACCESSION NUMBER:302161
FILE ID:EUR504
DATE:09/03/93
TITLE:AGREEMENTS WITH RUSSIA ON MTCR, SPACE, ENERGY DISCUSSED (09/03/93)
TEXT:*93090304.EUR
*EUR504 09/03/93 *
AGREEMENTS WITH RUSSIA ON MTCR, SPACE, ENERGY DISCUSSED
(Also foreign policy during Russian PM's visit) (590)
By David Pitts
USIA Staff Writer
Washington -- Russia's agreement to abide by the provisions of the Missile
Technology Control Regime (MTCR) "is really a very good signal of Russia's
intent to be a really reliable partner in terms of its nonproliferation
behavior," a senior administration official has said.
Speaking late September 2 after the United States and Russia signed a
memorandum of understanding on MTCR as well as a number of agreements on
space, energy, and technical cooperation, the official said he would put
the MTCR memorandum "at the top of the list" in terms of importance.
But he also said the other pacts, particularly the agreement to cooperate on
space and in the development of a space shuttle, were also very important
and signal a new relationship between the two nations in the area of
economic cooperation.
The agreements emerged from a two-day meeting of the U.S.-Russian Commission
on Cooperation in Space and Energy, which was created at the Vancouver
Summit between President Clinton and Russian President Yeltsin. The
meeting in Washington was led by Vice President Gore for the United States
and Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin for Russia.
The agreements also provided for the creation of six working groups under
the commission. "In many respects, the most important is the Business
Development Committee," the official said. "This committee will be the
committee that works in the oil and gas area, in the area of nuclear power
plant safety and in the area of lowering barriers to trade and investment
in general," he added.
1
With regard to cooperation on the space shuttle, the official said, "We're
clearly looking at getting something up and flying in the mid-nineties time
frame." The benefits of the cooperation will be "lower cost, shorter time
to get activities going in space, short time to get construction going,
shorter time to get people flying in experiments under way," he noted.
The senior official also discussed the talks between President Clinton and
Chernomyrdin on foreign policy.
On Russian-Ukrainian relations, the official said the president "reiterated
our commitment to do what we can to help improve the Russian-Ukrainian
relationship, and our interest in seeing, obviously as soon as possible, a
non-nuclear Ukraine."
On the Baltics, the official said President Clinton "reiterated our
continued interest in an early withdrawal of the Russian military forces
from Estonia and Latvia." Chernomyrdin communicated "a very strong view
that the Russian government understood the need to withdraw the troops. He
listed the problems that are currently preventing an early withdrawal. But
he did speak with some degree of certainty that the Russians had a plan to
withdraw their troops," he added.
On the Jackson-Vanik amendment, the official said, "We don't have a time
frame for repealing Jackson-Vanik. Our view has been that there continues
to be a problem with refuseniks in Russia. There are still Jews and
Christians denied the right to emigrate for two reasons -- one is security
reasons and the other is what they call poor relatives," he remarked.
"We also feel very strongly that the Russian government must establish a
commission that can review cases in the future after any possible repeal of
the Jackson-Vanik Amendment. But right now we are not talking in real
terms about doing that because we're not there yet. We've simply
enunciated our position again for the Russian side," the official said.
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