CNN - World anxious about Russian elections

World anxious about Russian elections

June 15, 1996
Web posted at: 9:45 p.m. EDT (2145 GMT)

MOSCOW (CNN) -- While President Clinton has made it clear that he favors President Boris Yeltsin in Sunday's presidential election, the White House says it is prepared to deal with whoever wins -- but on its terms.

"What we have to do is make sure they understand that while we respect their choice, we're going to calibrate our policies to take into account the policies of the leaders they elect," said Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott

That Clinton shares a good rapport with Yeltsin is well documented. And Washington is virtually an international branch office for Yeltsin's campaign, much as it was during former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres' unsuccessful re-election campaign.

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"We are right to support Yeltsin but not in an obvious, heavy-handed fashion which only hurts him by making him out to be a tool of the Americans," said Michael Mandelbaum of Johns Hopkins University. "So I think there was a tactical mistake in implementing the policy."

But some analysts say that a Yeltsin win could trigger a succession crisis, and compel him to compromise on several existing policies.

"All of the political factions that have supported Yeltsin have been promised something or think they have been, and they're going to want to claim that," Gregory Guroff of the Center for Post-Soviet Studies.

The other worry is about Yeltsin's health. Undoubtedly, the 65-year-old leader has mounted an aggressive and energetic campaign, even moving and shaking to pop music to capture the youth vote. But last year, he was hospitalized for heart problems.

"Yeltsin's health is shaky," Mandelbaum said. "It's far from clear that he can serve out the five years to which he would be elected should he win."

And while the prospect of a Communist resurgence has Western leaders wondering how Russia's presidential election might affect world politics, there is some consensus that a victory by Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov would not be as threatening as the pre-election hype would have people believe.

"Maybe naively, I don't see the opportunity for the Communist Party to reassert anything like its control over the country that you and I would have seen 10 years ago," Guroff said.

Perhaps, more than any other part of the world, outposts of the former Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe are anxious about the outcome of the presidential election.

"(It) could create new re-alignments in the former Soviet blocs between those who would want speedy integration with the Western Europe and those who think 'let's make a deal with the new powers that be in Moscow,'" said political scientist Jacques Rupnik.

After a Communist victory, analysts say, countries yearning for NATO membership like the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary would no longer take "let's wait and see" for an answer.

Rupnik says that Central Europe has become a "sort of no man's land." "Strategically (it is) a void and the question mark is who is going to fill that void."

"Russia remains an extremely important supplier of energy, of civil nuclear technology and through these instruments Russia can exercise a good deal of leverage," said Bruce Clark, diplomatic correspondent for The Financial Times. "And that will be the case whoever wins."

CNN Correspondents Steve Hurst and Bill Delaney and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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World anxious about Russian elections

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