The Helsinki summit

Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin should have plenty to talk about when they get together in Helsinki this week. President Clinton travels to Finland in the middle of a high-wire effort to accomplish two apparently contradictory things at once.

He is determined that NATO, the military alliance of North American and West European democracies, will commit itself to accepting a first wave of new members from among former Warsaw Pact nations by July. But he also wants NATO and Russia to form a new, cooperative relationship. This is no easy task because aspiring members want to join NATO in large part to win protection from Russia, and because most Russians still view NATO as a hostile alliance. Yet both goals are worthy and, as Clinton has stated, not contradictory.

The principles that have guided the administration's effort, and that should rule in Helsinki, are clear. The West should be as forthcoming as is prudently possible on questions regarding Russia's integration with the West. That means, among other things, giving Russia a voice in peacekeeping and security matters and forging a new agreement limiting the deployment of tanks, airplanes and other weaponry in Central Europe.

At the same time, the West should be as rigid as possible in declaring that no country, regardless of its history, can involuntarily fall into Russia's sphere of influence. That means, among other things, that NATO expansion proceeds on schedule, whether a NATO-Russia comes about or not, and that no nation be excluded from eventual NATO membership. It means working out a parallel NATO agreement with Ukraine, insisting that Russia not use an undemocratic Belarus as a pawn, and committing firmly to the eternal sovereignty of the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

This is a time of extraordinary opportunity in Europe. Most former communist nations are begging to join the club of free market democracies and are willing to resolve their border disputes and ethnic feuds to do so. The West would be shortsighted to spurn them. Russia has also joined the democratic camp, if more tenuously than some of its neighbors, and remains fundamentally interested in finding ways to cooperate with the West. Helsinki will not provide any breakthroughs, but it could be an important step toward creating an undivided Europe.

-- The Washington Post