Gore's Role: Deep In The Details

By By Karen Tumulty/Manchester, N.H.

Few people last week were as anxious as Al Gore about the peace initiative of Russia's Viktor Chernomyrdin and Finland's Martti Ahtisaari. As the Vice President campaigned in New Hampshire, the topic of the day was to have been health care for the elderly, but at every stop Gore met questions about the peace plan that had just been accepted by the Yugoslav parliament. Gore maintained a cautious face publicly, warning that it was premature to claim victory. Still, several times in private he dashed to a secure phone line to get the latest, increasingly optimistic assessments from his national security adviser, Leon Fuerth. As Oliver North told his conservative radio listeners last week, the combat "may be ending just in time to save Al Gore's hide."

Gore can claim direct involvement in the breakthrough. He and then Prime Minister Chernomyrdin had sat across many tables over six years, negotiating issues from safeguards on plutonium to trade disputes over frozen chicken legs. But never had their knowledge and trust of each other been so tested as on May 3. On that day, Chernomyrdin came as Russia's Balkan envoy to Gore's Victorian mansion in Washington to discuss the situation in Yugoslavia. Sitting down at the Vice President's dining-room table, they could not have known they were putting into motion the strategy that would ultimately produce a peace plan for Kosovo.

During two hours of intense talks that night, Chernomyrdin warned Gore and other top U.S. officials that he could not do alone what the West was asking. As a result, the next morning, at the same table, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright came up with the name of Finnish President Ahtisaari as Chernomyrdin's likely partner. And as everyone stood to leave, Gore told Chernomyrdin that there was something else he should have. He handed the Russian a manila envelope containing a reminder of the most fundamental reason why both countries needed to succeed--a draft of a yet unreleased State Department report, prepared overnight, laying out the extent of the ethnic cleansing that was taking place in Kosovo.

Gore's interest in the Balkans goes back long before the current crisis. While still in Congress, he was denouncing Slobodan Milosevic on the Senate floor when few Americans had even heard of him; in his first week as Bill Clinton's running mate, he pressed the Arkansas Governor to make the Balkans a foreign policy priority. But now the whole endeavor is playing out in peculiarly personal terms for Gore: the success of a Kosovo peace plan will bear directly on his run for the presidency.

Already, the war has taken its toll on public opinion about both the performance of the Clinton-Gore Administration and the direction of the country in general. And it remains far from certain that Gore and Chernomyrdin can meet the standard of success they agreed upon that night last month: the safe return of Kosovar refugees. Still, it is hard to imagine a worse disaster for Gore than the prospect of a campaign season with U.S. ground troops in a war with the Serbs.

Which may explain why one of the first things Gore did on getting back to Washington was send Chernomyrdin a congratulatory note. Sometimes, he has learned, personal touches make all the difference.