Boris Yeltsin touched a delicate American nerve when he raised the possibility that U.S. servicemen are being held prisoner in the vast reaches of Russia.
Few images so torment America. Throughout the nation's history, as an aftermath of all its wars, declared and undeclared, Americans have agonized over their missing kin.The nation refuses to forget.
The plight of American hostages in Lebanon never faded from the national consciousness.
Whether Americans are held alive in the jungles of Southeast Asia is a question the nation asks again and again.
And then Yeltsin came to America for a two-day summit with President Bush and said there was evidence of one of America's worst Cold War nightmares.
Was Yeltsin's statement an extraordinary symbol of the changed relationship between Russia and the United States? Or was it a maneuver in the rough and tumble of Russian politics? Or possibly a bit of both.
The Russian president suggested there was credible evidence that his communist predecessors through the 70-year history of their rule participated in a monstrous violation of the most basic human rights.
Yeltsin never mentioned his predecessor, Mikhail S. Gorbachev. But his talk of American prisoners raised an obvious question: Did Gorbachev also have the evidence of American prisoners? After all, Gorbachev was head of the Communist Party and president of the Soviet Union.
President Bush said last week that he had raised the issue with Gorbachev and that, in Bush's recollection, the Soviet leader denied it.
For years, Yeltsin was the outcast while the West toasted Gorbachev. Bush and his Western colleagues tried their best to prop up Gorbachev as his power slipped away. Only six weeks ago, Gorbachev toured the United States and was treated as a hero.
Yeltsin holds the power now and he chose this summit to give credence to allegations that his communist predecessors held as prisoners soldiers who were not at war with the Soviet Union.
They included Americans who fought in two world wars, in Korea and Vietnam.
According to Russian reports they also could include American pilots shot down during spy missions over the Soviet Union. If the Soviets held such pilots, it raises the additional question of whether earlier U.S. administrations knew those pilots were prisoners and kept the truth from their families and the public.
Bush could not allow Yeltsin's statement to stand without a pledge of U.S. action.
When Bush and Yeltsin stepped into the Rose Garden on Tuesday to announce agreement for dramatic cuts in their missile forces, the president also declared they had discussed the POW question and were establishing a joint investigating commission.
"We will spare no effort in working with our Russian colleagues," Bush said.
It was another opportunity to praise Yeltsin.
"This demonstrates his leadership and the period of change we are saluting," Bush said.
Did he think there might be Americans alive in Russian labor camps?
"I have no evidence of that," said Bush.
The Russian president said the evidence of Americans held prisoner in Russia came from KGB and Communist Party files.
Vyacheslav Kostikov, Yeltsin's spokesman, made the astonishing assertion that 2,800 U.S. citizens "found themselves on Soviet soil" after World War I, World War II and Vietnam, and "many were held in prison."