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NODIS CHANNEL 9424122

THE SECRETARY OF STATE

WASHINGTON

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MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT

FROM: Warren Christopher

SUBJECT: Night Note

I would like to urge your attendance at the Budapest Summit December 5-6. Despite the heavy demands on your time, I believe strongly that this is one not to pass up. I feel that you should complete the year as you began it -- leading the world towards the recreation of European security -- which

means our security. My reasons:

1. We are on the verge of being able to lay out a sweeping vision of a "new European security architecture" that would build on your January Brussels Speech. This new "architecture" involves launching two processes or tracks in rough parallel during the first ten days of December. 

Track One:  Small but significant steps towards starting the process of NATO expansion. There would be no timetable and criteria-but we envision that a communique would be issued at the December 1-2 NATO Ministerial which I will attend.  The Communique would announce that NATO has started to define its future and will begin to discuss the "news and why's" of NATO membership with some partnership for peace members next year. 

Track Two: The upgrading of CSCE to make it a more effective organization.  This would not make the CSCE into the "supra-NATO" group Moscow used to seek; they have abandoned that unacceptable idea and have reacted favorably to the idea of a two-track approach to European Security.  Strobe talked to his Russian counterpart in London this morning on the subject. 

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2. Your presence in Budapest will also strengthen the image of strong foreign policy leadership flowing from recent events. But, unlike your skillful handling of challenges in Haiti, Iraq and North Korea, this issue looks forward to the future, and addresses the charge (from the likes of Cheney, Kissinger, Brzezinski, Lugar, Nunn) that we lack a strategic vision. You should be there to identify yourself as the architect.

3. Furthermore, there will be criticism if you are not there. For two days Yeltsin and Kohl, both of whom have personally asked you to join them, would hold center stage without you. Yeltsin especially, having heard you tell him in September that you would come if it is important, will be more reluctant to enter into wide-ranging agreements without you. The press will note your absence.

4. Finally, there is Ukraine. There is a good chance you, Yeltsin, and Major would be able to sign an historic agreement with Kuchma that finally gets Ukraine denuclearized and at the same time guarantees its sovereign integrity. This alone, if it were to take place, would justify a trip. 

5. The trip could be quite short. Depending on your desire, it could be as short as 30 hours, although that would be pushing it. I think it would play well at home.

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I am attaching an excerpt from a message that Strobe sent me last night from London, It does not do justice to Strobe's writing to summarize it, so I will send the entire excerpt relating to Budapest.

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Excerpt from Strobe Talbott's Letter to the Secretary

As I indicated on the phone, I am more convinced than ever that the Budapest CSCE summit is an extremely important opportunity for the President -- and, conversely, that it would be a serious mistake for him not to go.

Along with Collins and Kornblum, I worked with Mamadov to develop an approach that builds on the great progress that the President ·and Yeltsin made in Washington two weeks ago. CSCE is absolutely key because the Russians are part of it (indeed, their Soviet predecessors were founding members). Therefore, we can make the enhancement· of CSCE part of a larger, inclusive, integrative context within which to lay the ground for NATO expansion. 

We can do this in a way that does not impinge on the independence and unique role of NATO itself, yet that does help us avoid the "new divisions" problem that loomed so large a year ago September- when we last grappled with the task. 

At issue ·here is not just Russia but Ukraine, the Baltics, the southern-tier CEE countries and several other former Soviet and Warsaw Pact states that will not be in line for early membership in NATO and whose own sense of security and whose eligibility for eventual full integration into the West must

not be sacrificed for the sake of early admission for the Visegrad Countries. 

A blunt but pertinent word about our domestic politics: If we get this right -- and at the right-time, which means very soon -- we can seize control over this issue in a way that essentially takes it away from the Republicans in 96.  That  doesn't mean Poland will be in NATO by then. But it does mean  we'll  have a plan in place and a process underway that will make it difficult for anyone to attack the President for failing to deliver on his promises or for giving the Russians a veto over NATO expansion. 

In that sense, the December Budapest meeting is a perfect bookend for the year, rounding out what the President said and did on the subject of European Security in January, when he unveiled PEP, committed himself to NATO expansion, and laid out his vision of a Europe undivided. 

One more thing in the "pro" category: By December, we'll  no doubt have been through a couple more· perils of Pauline Cliffhangers with Kozyrev & Co. over Bosnia and Iraq, and the Bill-Boris relationship will need some face-to-face tending to. 

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Finally, a word on the serious downside of his not going: the Euros, East and West, are counting on him to be there; Budapest is a very big deal for them; our President's absence would stir up concerns and criticisms about whether he is, in some sense, turning his back on Europe to concentrate on other regions (he'll have recently been to Jakarta for APEC and will be about to go to Miami). Yeltsin, according to Mamedov, will feel puzzled and let down. He thinks the President agreed to come "if there's important work to do" -- and it's hard to imagine more important work than putting a Clinton stamp on, and establishing the right direction for, the evolution of post-Cold War Europe. Putting it quite bluntly, Mamedov fears that a Clinton no-show at Budapest will be read by Yeltsin as a retraction on his promise "to pursue a two-track evolution of Europe--NATO expansion coupled with greater integration. Mamedov further believes that without the personal endorsement of President Clinton, our CSCE proposals will lose much of their value to reassure the non V-4 they have not been left by NATO expansion. 

My worst fear is that this will drag out; we'll keep everyone--the Euros, Yeltsin, the CEE and FSU types--all in suspense. If as is likely, delay leads to a negative decision, our President will get doubly slammed for indecision and abdication on an issue on which he had earlier been out front; if he goes at the last minute, he'll get hit for indecision and improvisation, and we won't have laid the ground properly for his attendance. 

For that reason, I believe we should push very hard for a positive decision if possible before the Middle East trip. We are less than six weeks from Budapest, and we need every single day possible to prepare--one way or another. 

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