DATE=12/23/1999 TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT TITLE=YEARENDER: RUSSIA / WEST RELATIONS NUMBER=5-45105 BYLINE=EVE CONANT DATELINE=MOSCOW CONTENT= VOICED AT: INTRO: During the past year, Russia's warm relations with the West soured; with disputes about the Kosovo war, expanded NATO membership, financial scandals, nuclear arms treaties, diplomatic spying, and Russia's war in Chechnya. Moscow Correspondent Eve Conant looks back on a year that saw post-Soviet Russia's relations with the West reach an all time low. TEXT: Russia's relations with the West by the end of 1999 can perhaps be best summed up with a warning made by President Boris Yeltsin to the United States. Mr. Yeltsin -- during an official visit to China in early December -- accused the United States of using what he called a "language of force" with Russia. /// YELTSIN ACT - IN RUSSIAN - FADE UNDER /// President Yeltsin says -- perhaps President Clinton has forgotten that Russia has a full arsenal of nuclear weapons. He says that Mr. Clinton seems to have forgotten what kind of world he lives in. And, Mr. Yeltsin says -- it has never been and never will be the kind of world where the U-S president can dictate to the whole world how to live. In past years, the Yeltsin-and-Clinton relationship was one of bear hugs and talk of mutual understanding. By the end of 1999 things had certainly changed. Mr. Yeltsin's latest comments followed a year of U-S led NATO air strikes on Iraq and then Serbia, Russia's Slav and Orthodox ally. And, independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer says relations are going from bad to worse. /// FELGENHAUER ACT ONE /// Deterioration, growing deterioration, and especially on the public level. Anti-Western feelings have been growing in Russia since the financial collapse of 1998. Then came the NATO war in the Balkans and very serious upsurge of anti-Western feelings. Now there is the war in Chechnya and the Russian public mostly supports this war. Western criticism is seen as meddling in Russia's affairs. For public opinion in the West, Russia is increasingly a barbaric country that uses heavy weapons to hit civilians in the Caucasus. /// END ACT /// In a meeting with top generals, Russia's defense minister accused the West of stirring up trouble in the Caucasus to benefit U-S geopolitical interests. Soon after, several Caucasus nations and Turkey signed a U-S backed multibillion-dollar pipeline agreement that bypassed Russia. Analyst Pavel Felgenhauer says that after months of feeling ignored by the West as NATO bombed Serbia, Russia's political and military leaders were unmoved when Western moral interventionists, as he calls them, cried out against the Chechnya offensive. /// FELGENHAUER ACT TWO /// The result of this has been not simply a cooling of relations, but a very serious breakdown of international law over the last year. This breakdown of international law creates a situation in the world that is much more dangerous than in Cold War times. Of course, before there was confrontation in Europe and globally, but there were certain rules both sides adhered to. /// END ACT /// Some of those international rules Mr. Felgenhauer is referring to are nuclear arms agreements. Russia is vehemently opposed to a U-S proposal to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which Russia regards as the cornerstone of all arms deals. Nineteen-Ninety-Nine also saw Russia prepare a new draft military doctrine, one which allows for the first use of nuclear weapons. The proposal has not been passed into law, but is another sign of Russia's intensified desire to be regarded as a tough, leading nuclear power. It was the year that Russia froze relations with NATO. One day after NATO began air strikes against Serbia, Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov gave his appraisal of a new Western philosophy that put human rights above sovereignty. /// IVANOV ACT - IN RUSSIAN - FADE UNDER /// He says that for the first time since World War Two, an act of aggression was committed against a sovereign state in Europe. Yesterday it was Iraq -- he says -- today it is Yugoslavia, who is next? He says the U-S goals are obvious -- to establish a political, military, and economic dictatorship over the entire world." The U-S embassy's outer walls would soon be spattered with paint and broken glass after hundreds of protestors vented their rage at what they called U-S warmongering and hypocrisy And on the financial front, 1999 saw financial scandals rock the West's perception of Russia. Americans were shocked by allegations that Russia laundered more than 10-billion dollars through a New York bank. An analyst with the U-S-A-Canada Institute, Viktor Kremenyuk, say the scandal embarrassed Russian officials, who called the reports a Western conspiracy to undermine Russia's prestige, but did not surprise average Russians. /// KREMENYUK ACT /// First of all, it was good that the Americans ceased to regard Mr. Yeltsin and his regime as guarantors of democracy in Russia, which was simply ridiculous. And secondly, it is good that the people of the United States have understood at least part of our problem. Part of the problems I hope they have understood is that we face an oligarchic regime, very corrupt, which abuses the law, abuses the constitution, abuses everything. /// END ACT /// But reaction to the financial scandals, tit-for-tat (retaliatory) spy expulsions, and nuclear brinkmanship seem to show such an understanding has not been reached. Nineteen-Ninety-Nine was the start of election season for both Russia and the United States. Russians voted in a new parliament that supports a war in Chechnya that the West strongly condemns. Average Russians say the West has let them down. And after a decade of following Western guidelines, the time has come for a strong-handed leader that will not compromise so much with the West, but will instead keep Russia's national interests first and foremost. (SIGNED) NEB/EC/JWH/RAE 23-Dec-1999 10:30 AM EDT (23-Dec-1999 1530 UTC) NNNN Source: Voice of America .