THE WEST'S efforts to woo Russia into accepting the planned eastward expansion of the Nato military alliance met a chilly reception yesterday from the Russian President, Mr Boris Yeltsin.
Mr Yeltsin greeted the Nato general secretary, Mr Javier Solana, with a warning that he would take an even tougher line than his ministers in opposing the admission of eastern European states to the western alliance.
"They say be [Mr Evgeni Primakov, the foreign minister] talked to you too mildly, so I will be tougher than him in making our position clear," Mr Yeltsin told Mr Solana, whose visit to Moscow this week is the first by a Nato chief in four years.
Mr Yeltsin's hard public stance was countered by Mr Solana's equally firm insistence that Nato would not be swayed from its enlargement plans. "We are not going to change course," Mr Solana said.
His unbending message echoed an even stronger pledge this week in Prague by Mr Warren Christopher, the US secretary of state, who arrived yesterday in Moscow for talks with senior Russian officials. Mr Christopher told a receptive eastern European audience "Nato has made a commitment to take in new members and it must not, and will not, keep new democracies in the waiting room for ever."
During two days of talks with Russian leaders today and tomorrow, Mr Christopher is expected to reiterate this position, while assuring Moscow that it will have a special relationship of its own with the west. The double headed offensive suggests that western leaders, who have been effusive in their political and economic support for Mr Yeltsin's regime over the past few weeks, have decided to draw a line when it comes to security issues.
Less than three months ahead of fiercely contested presidential elections expected to pit Mr Yeltsin against Mr Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist front runner, western leaders have personally endorsed the Kremlin chief and offered him generous economic support.
But this week Mr Solana and Mr Christopher have served Mr Yeltsin notice that these supportive policies do not extend to softening the west's line on Nato expansion.
"I think they are telling the Russians that the expansion of Nato is inevitable. It can be done in an amicable way, but the Russians should not have any delusions of stopping it," said Mr Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former US national security adviser and an early advocate of Nato enlargement.
Analysts believe the Russian parliament's symbolic vote last week to annul the treaty that broke up the Soviet Union, and the coming US presidential elections, have contributed to this tougher approach in the west. In a step which may earn him a public reprimand today from the Communist dominated legislature, Mr Christopher this week strongly condemned the pro Soviet vote.
There are already some signs that the adamant line on Nato expansion could be bearing fruit. Mr Brzezinski said that behind closed doors, Moscow had already begun to negotiate on the conditions of Nato enlargement, demanding that no nuclear weapons be stationed in eastern Europe, no US or German soldiers be based in Poland, and there should be no unified command for the expanded alliance.