Yeltsin Reminds U.S. of Moscow's Nuclear Capability
BEIJING--Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin bluntly reminded President Clinton on Thursday that Moscow has a vast nuclear arsenal and railed at the U.S. leader for trying to meddle in Russia's internal affairs."Yesterday, Clinton took the liberty of putting pressure on Russia," Yeltsin said during a visit to Beijing. "He obviously must have forgotten for a few seconds, a minute or half a minute, what Russia is and that Russia possesses a full arsenal of nuclear weapons. He's forgotten it, and that's why he's decided to flex his muscles, as they say."
In recent days, Clinton and European leaders have criticized Russia's war in the separatist republic of Chechnya, particularly condemning a warning by the Russian military that as many as 40,000 civilians could face death by bombing if they do not leave Grozny, the Chechen capital, by Saturday.
Yeltsin's outburst came during a two-day trip to Beijing to win support for the war from Chinese President Jiang Zemin--and to present a united front against what both Russia and China see as an unhealthy balance of global power in America's favor. It was a harsh public attack on the U.S. president he called his "friend" only a few months ago.
"I want to tell Clinton through you that he shouldn't forget the world he's living in," Yeltsin told select reporters attending a meeting between himself and Li Peng, chairman of China's legislature. "It's never been the case, and it will never be the case, that he can dictate how the whole world should live, work and play. No! And once again, no!"
Yeltsin's performance was reminiscent of Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev's 1956 harangue about the West in which he said, "We will bury you!"
My Sardonic Thoughts
- It was only a matter of time.
- Elect a governer of a state who has absolutely no foreign policy experience, and what do you get.... COLD WAR
- Why does Clinton think that we are supposed to interfere in another country's internal strife?
- If some other country had tried to intervene in the US in the 1800's during our civil war, what would we have thought/done?
- You can only push a bear so far...
