President Bush welcomed Russian President Boris Yeltsin to the White House Tuesday as a partner "trying to build a democratic peace." The Russian president said it was time to step away from "the abyss of confrontation."
As the two leaders opened the first summit of the post-Soviet era, U.S. and Russian negotiators were making last-minute efforts to produce an agreement for new reductions in their nuclear arsenals.The White House rolled out a red carpet for a formal South Lawn welcome. A military band, an honor guard and a 21-gun salute greeted Yeltsin, the first democratically elected leader of Russia.
"Today marks the beginning of a new era, a new kind of summit, not a meeting between two powers struggling for global supremacy but between two partners trying to build a democratic peace," Bush said. "Today, the threat of a cataclysmic war has vanished . . . and today the threat of a nuclear nightmare is more distant now than at any time since the dawn of the nuclear era."
Yeltsin responded, "The time our two nations viewed each other with suspicion and even animosity is now behind us.
"Our two nations are increasingly aware that it is more than wasteful to throw our energies away into the abyss of confrontation," he said.
Yeltsin said he hoped "to bring Russia back to normalcy" after 75 years of communist rule. But he added, "We have not come here to ask your country to solve our problems for us."
The world was watching to see if the two leaders would succeed in establishing a framework for a new round of reductions in their huge arsenals of nuclear missiles.
Yeltsin was optimistic an agreement would be completed.
"When the presidents take charge of something you may be sure it will be handled in the most efficient way," Yeltsin told reporters at the State Department before a luncheon with Secretary of State James Baker.
"President Bush and I trust each other. That means we will reach an agreement."
Baker and Russian Foreign Andrei Kozyrev worked for more than four hours Monday night on final details and again in the morning before the summit opened.
Bush and Yeltsin also hoped the three-day visit would break a congressional impasse on a $24 billion aid package that the United States and other Western countries have pledged to Russia and the other former Soviet republics.
The red-carpet welcome was a dramatic contrast to Yeltsin's first visit in September 1989, when the outspoken critic of then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was sneaked into the White House through a side entrance to a chilly reception from Bush.
Yeltsin was staying at Blair House, the official presidential guest house. His decision to stay there instead of at the Russian Embassy - which had been used by Gorbachev - carried its own symbolism.
The United States wants Russia to destroy all land-based missiles with multiple warheads. Moscow wanted the United States to scrap its submarine-launched ballistic missiles, but Bush has agreed only to retire one-third of them.