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VILNIUS,
Lithuania, June 14 — Ten years ago last January, Soviet tanks and machine
gunners stormed the central television studios and broadcasting tower of this
Baltic capital, killing 15 people and wounding hundreds, as the Red Army tried
to put down the wave of independence movements that was tearing the Soviet Union
apart. It
was one of the darkest hours of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev's rule as he
lurched between conservatives and liberals in the final days of empire before he
himself was swept aside, first by a conservative coup, and then by the man who
rescued him from it, Boris N. Yeltsin.
Now,
as President Bush prepares for his first meeting with Mr. Yeltsin's successor,
Vladimir V. Putin, a reckoning of sorts will be on the agenda for Lithuania and
its two Baltic neighbors, Latvia and Estonia. Call it a national insurance
policy that what happened here in January 1991 — and in 1940 when the Soviet
Army forcibly incorporated the Baltic states into the empire — will never
happen again. For these three small and fiercely independent democracies lead
the list of nine nations seeking to enter the NATO alliance in 2002. But Mr.
Putin, his top military commanders and most of the Russian establishment
strongly oppose what would be the first NATO advance onto the territory of the
former Soviet Union.
"Accepting
Lithuania into NATO is a signal to Russia that never and never will Lithuania be
taken over by Russia again," said President Valdas Adamkus in an interview
here. "This is a formal declaration to Russia politically that we are free,
and declaring ourselves free forever." It won't be easy. Between them, the
Baltic states have no competent armed forces, no tanks or artillery and a few
transport planes that could hardly be called an air force. But they are working
on it, and have contributed a few hundred peacekeepers to NATO forces in the
former Yugoslavia. And in the event that NATO ever had to defend the Baltic
states from attack, some Pentagon and NATO military planners believe that such a
defense could not be accomplished with conventional forces.
"Because
it is unlikely that NATO members would wish to ensure a country's protection
through a nuclear guarantee alone," a 1999 congressional study said, these
Western military officials said they doubted that the Baltic states would be
offered NATO membership "until alliance relations with Russia improve
dramatically." Besides the three Baltic states, NATO has accepted
formal applications from Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and
Slovenia. Croatia is seeking to join this group as a 10th applicant. This week,
in a NATO summit meeting Mr. Bush attended in Brussels, Western leaders agreed
that they would invite new members to join the alliance at a summit meeting in
Prague next year, but they were silent on which ones. This fall Mr. Bush is
expected to notify Congress which applicants the United States will support.
In
a speech in Warsaw on Friday, the president will elaborate his administration's
position on how far NATO's door remains open to the emerging democracies in
Eastern Europe and among the former Soviet republics. He is also expected to
reaffirm that Russia will have no veto over NATO's decisions. But at the same
time, Mr. Bush is seeking to engage Russia in a constructive discussion on
missile defense and, more generally, on how to improve international security.
Here in Vilnius, the generation of leaders who defied Soviet rule and have
worked more than a decade to build democratic institutions and a market economy
expect America's voice to be crucial in NATO's decision and have thus riveted
their attention on Mr. Bush.
"The
United States is the main pillar of our hopes to join NATO soon," said
Vytautas Landsbergis, who led Lithuania in its first days after independence and
who now sits in Parliament as a faction leader. "And if Russia succeeds to
delay this decision, it is a great victory for Moscow and a big concession to
Russia by the United States." The question of NATO expansion to Russia's
frontiers lies at the heart of Moscow's growing worry that instead of
integrating Russia deeper into the common European enterprise of building new
security structures, the Bush administration is erecting the foundations for
some future containment of Russia.
As
Mr. Bush and his top advisers have in recent weeks spoken in more conciliatory
tones about engaging Russia as a security partner, the anxiety level in the
Baltics has risen. The Baltic leaders fear a tradeoff in which Russia might be
convinced to go along with Mr. Bush's missile defense project in return for
leaving the Baltic states outside NATO. Mr. Putin's closest adviser on national
security matters, Sergei B. Ivanov, who became defense minister this spring,
last week issued a pointed warning that relations between Russia and the West
will deteriorate should NATO expansion plans move forward.
"NATO
enlargement symbolizes the formation of a security system in Europe in which
Russia is not an equal party and it is a direct infringement on Russia's vital
interests," he said in Brussels after meeting with NATO officials. "Politicians
of the alliance should think once again of the possible losses to the European
community if deciding on the enlargement of NATO ignores the opinion of
Russia." In the Baltics, Moscow's warnings are taken as so much bluster and
officials here are quick to point out that Russia just as vehemently opposed the
entry of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into NATO in 1999. Instead of
any deterioration, they point out, relations between those countries and Russia
have , if anything, led their leaders to speak to each other with a new clarity
and self-assurance.
"We
insist that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are not a direct threat to Russia
whether they are members of NATO or not," said Mr. Adamkus. "The issue
here is psychological: Russia cannot accept that their former Soviet republics,
which were incorporated by force, suddenly are not only separating themselves
physically and politically, but they are even becoming a member" of the
Western alliance. But Russia has other concerns, which Mr. Putin is likely to
raise with Mr. Bush. Most prominently, Russia's Baltic Fleet and home port in
the enclave of Kaliningrad, already cut off from Russia proper, will be flanked
by NATO countries if Lithuania joins the alliance. A key lifeline connecting
Kaliningrad to Russia is a military railroad that crosses Lithuania and Belarus.
In
March, Mr. Putin invited Mr. Adamkus to the Kremlin for their first meeting,
which turned out to be a long and intense negotiation in which Russia pressed
for a treaty guaranteeing Moscow's right to resupply its military forces in
Kaliningrad — mainly with fuel — along this rail line. By gaining such a
bilateral treaty, Mr. Putin apparently hoped to protect Russia from the day when
NATO might order Russian military traffic halted on the rail link. Mr. Adamkus,
beaming with pride over his own tenacity, said he "succeeded" in
withstanding Mr. Putin's barrage of charm and pressure. He looked Mr. Putin in
the eye, he said, and told him that the informal agreement that now allows
Russian military cargos — on a case-by-case basis — to cross Lithuania is
adequate. "I used the American phrase, I said, `Mr. Putin, if it isn't
broken, why fix it?' " The Russian leader "sat in silence for about
five seconds, then he smiled and said, `Yes,' and the issue was dropped."
But
Mr. Adamkus and other senior officials here acknowledged that if Lithuania joins
the Western alliance NATO would have the right to shut down Russian military
traffic through Lithuania in a period of tension. But Russia has its own
leverage over the Baltic states as a major supplier of energy to the region. In
Lithuania, the only oil refinery depends on cheap Russian crude oil to operate
profitably. Lukoil, the Russian oil company that supplies the refinery, cut back
its supplies last year in a commercial dispute with the American company,
Williams International, that Lithuania has retained to operate the refinery. And
Lithuania will likely need Russian cooperation to deal with the nuclear waste
from the Soviet-built Ignalina power station, whose reactors are of the same
design as the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine that exploded in 1986.
Lithuania
had pledged to close one of the two reactors by 2005 as a condition for entering
the European Union, but will need as much as $3 billion in Western assistance to
do so, Mr. Adamkus said. Where the radioactive fuel and wastes get stored may
depend on Russia.
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14.06.2001
