By Lucian Kim

Former Secretary of State James Baker rejected Russian suggestions that the West had broken a promise made in 1990 not to expand NATO into eastern Europe.

Baker, who oversaw U.S. foreign policy as communism collapsed in the Soviet Union and its satellite states, said today he had only floated the idea during talks with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

“This was a negotiating position briefly considered by the U.S. in regard to East Germany only in talks about German unification and then promptly discarded,” Baker told reporters during a visit to Moscow.

Relations with the U.S. deteriorated under the previous administration in part because Russia opposed President George W. Bush’s open support for Georgia and Ukraine joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The entry of nine former Soviet satellite states into the alliance in 2004 was already viewed by Russia as U.S. encroachment on its borders.

Baker, who held talks with Gorbachev in February 1990, suggested that Soviet ally East Germany not be included in NATO in the event of German reunification. “Not only did the Soviets not insist on that position at the time, but they actually agreed to a written treaty that expanded NATO eastward to include all of East Germany,” Baker said today.

Georgian War

Russia, which has seen all its former allies from the Warsaw Pact orient themselves to the West, is justifying the modernization of its armed forces as a response to NATO expansion. The alliance renewed ties with Russia earlier this month after freezing relations following the five-day Georgian war last August.

President Barack Obama has called for a “reset” in relations as he seeks Russian cooperation on his policies toward Afghanistan and Iran. Baker, who isn’t traveling in an official capacity, is one of three former secretaries of state in Moscow this week. Henry Kissinger and George Shultz are also due for talks with officials.

Baker, 78, served as George H.W. Bush’s secretary of state from 1989 to 1992. During that period the Berlin Wall fell, Germany reunited and the Soviet Union broke into 15 independent countries. Baker Botts LLP, the law firm in which Baker is a senior partner, has 15 lawyers working in its Moscow office, which was opened in 1993.

Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia -- all once part of the Warsaw Pact -- joined NATO in 2004. East Germany was absorbed into the alliance when Germany was reunified in October 1990.

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