PRESS BRIEFING BY MIKE MCCURRY AND DAVID JOHNSON
THE WHITE HOUSE
February 27, 1997
JOHNSON: The President of the United States of America and the President of the Russian Federation, Mr. Yeltsin, spoke today at about noon Eastern Standard Time. Their conversation lasted about 20 minutes. As some of you know, they used consecutive translation.
This is part of a continuing pattern of consultations that the United States and the Russian Federation have had as we lead up to the summit in Helsinki. They followed up on some of the issues that were discussed when Secretary Albright was in Moscow last week, and when Prime Minister Chernomyrdin was here in Washington for the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission meetings earlier in the month.
They agreed on basically a three-part agenda for the Helsinki summit. The first item is going to be European security and the efforts of the United States and its allies and the Russian Federation to create a new security architecture for Europe, which reflects the realities of the post-Cold War world. They're going to spend some time on the second item, and that is arms control, and our efforts to lower the level of armaments, particular nuclear arms; and third, on economic issues, and they're going to concentrate there on the economic interaction between the United States and the Russian Federation and our efforts to support their reform process and their economy as it moves forward.
We're going to have expert teams from the United States traveling to Moscow over the course of the next few weeks in advance of the summit on all three of those agenda items, and their work there will help prepare for the summit in Helsinki and we believe make it a very successful venture. The President and President Yeltsin both look forward to meeting with each other and they closed off with that.
Q: David, do you expect President Clinton, by the time he gets to Helsinki, to be able to offer Yeltsin a specific START III proposal with some numbers as to a lower limit of nuclear weapons?
JOHNSON: I know that as our expert teams travel to Moscow, arms control, and particularly nuclear arms control is one of the items on the agenda. I don't think I'm in a position to forecast where we're going to be on that at the time, but we certainly hope to move that process forward in Helsinki.
Q: Can you tell us how much work is being done at least at this end?
JOHNSON: Well, I can tell you that an arms control team will be going soon in order to try to work out some things with the Russians in order to move this process forward.
Q: Did they talk today about NATO expansion?
JOHNSON: They talked about European security; NATO expansion was mentioned, but this was basically a reasonably abbreviated call to agree on the agenda and to talk about the teams that are going to be going forward.
Q: Anything at all following up on Yeltsin's comments and some of the hints of new flexibility, perhaps?
JOHNSON: No, it wasn't an opportunity or it wasn't taken as an opportunity to negotiate on these specific issues; more to agree on this being the agenda that we need to move forward on for the summit.
Q: But, David, do you have an understanding of what this compromise that Yeltsin suggested might be accepted at Helsinki consists of? What kind of compromise is he talking about?
JOHNSON: I know that when our teams get there next week -- not necessarily next week on this issue, but during the course of the next few weeks, one of the things they're going to be talking about is how we move forward on the NATO-Russian charter and how we move forward on the other issues related to NATO expansion. But this was not a detailed conversation about those issues, and I don't think it's going to be productive to try to move that forward here.
Q: David, is Yeltsin expected to attend the G-7 in Denver?
JOHNSON: He's expected to attend the Denver summit as far as I'm aware, yes.
Q: Can you say what support you're offering on their economic reforms, more specifically than simply the word "support"?
JOHNSON: Not at this point. I think that as the agenda item gets further developed during the expert team meetings, we might be able to talk about that a little further. But I can't -
Q: Bank loans or lending or -
JOHNSON: I can't help you with that today.
Q: Who initiated the call?
JOHNSON: I believe we did, but let me make sure.
MCCURRY: If I'm not mistaken, I think in the President's letter to President Yeltsin, delivered by Secretary Albright, there was also a suggestion that they touch base by phone sometime sooner. That was one of the outcomes of that conversation. And obviously, on the question of what type of discussions we are having with the Russian Federation, remember that those are discussions between NATO and the Russian Federation, and Secretary General Solana has been instrumental in presenting on behalf of the Alliance many of the ideas we have for the development of a newly defined relationship between NATO and the Russian Federation.
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