…AND ITS CONSEQUENCES GROW.

Russian military expert Pavel Felgengauer said in the May 4 Segodnya that “Dzhokhar Dudayev helps Bill Clinton,” but he noted that the Chechen leader is not helping himself. Clinton, Felgengauer suggested, will use Russia’s difficulties in Chechnya to press Yeltsin on NATO expansion, but the Chechens should remember that they will never be members of the Western defense alliance. In the same issue of that paper, Lt. Gen. Stanislav Kavun, the deputy commander of Russia’s Internal Troops, said that the “Chechen syndrome” was spreading among his forces and that Moscow was not doing enough to combat it. Just as the Afghan fighting affected the morale and fighting capacity of Soviet soldiers, so too and to a much greater degree, the fighting in Chechnya is affecting officers and men there. Kavun blamed media coverage and said that “it is extremely difficult to perform one’s duties if amid a mass of groundless accusations; one begins to feel like a murderer.” The Interior ministry general refused to comment about a recent anonymous poll showing that 51 percent of officers serving in Chechnya and 42 percent of troops there favored withdrawal.

The Makings of a Deal on the Iranian Nuclear Sale.