WHAT DID KOHL AND CHIRAC REALLY TELL YELTSIN ABOUT THE BALTIC STATES?

Official Moscow implied yesterday that German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and French President Jacques Chirac agreed with Russia’s policy toward the Baltic states during yesterday’s tripartite summit near Moscow with Russian President Boris Yeltsin (see Russia section above). The Kremlin’s foreign policy coordinator and presidential spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky credited Chirac with "coming out against the admission of the Baltic states to NATO." Unnamed Kremlin officials told other Russian agencies that Kohl, noting the Baltic states’ "keenness to join the European Union, stressed that not a single country could join the EU if it had not settled border issues with its neighbors or if it violated the rights of its [ethnic] minorities." (Itar-Tass and other Russian agencies, March 26)

The statements attributed to the two West European leaders would amount to an abrupt departure from the official positions of their counties and of the EU and NATO. Official Moscow’s version of their statements is implausible–most likely distorted for propaganda purposes. What it does accurately reflect is Moscow’s own policy of playing the ethnic card and stonewalling on border agreements in order to thwart the Baltic states’ aspirations to join NATO and the EU.

Romanian Parties Eye "Bessarabia" and Bukovina.