CLINTON, YELTSIN SET TABLE FOR TALKS ON ARMS, NATO.

Byline: Alison Mitchell The New York Times

President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin began a two-day summit meeting here Thursday, with the United States signaling its willingness to make further arms control concessions and a conciliatory Yeltsin stressing that the two leaders must ``depart as friends as we've done in the past.''

In their first meeting in nearly a year, the two men dined together for more than two hours on salmon and reindeer, red and white wine and champagne in the Finnish presidential palace along with their host, President Martti Ahtisaari.

The evening was a prelude to two sets of negotiating sessions planned for today that are widely viewed as some of the most crucial talks between Russia and America since the end of the Cold War.

Clinton and Yeltsin, who have not seen each other since their respective re-elections, are trying to bridge the deep divisions that have arisen between the onetime adversaries over the planned eastward expansion of the U.S.-led NATO to include nations from the former Soviet bloc.

For days leading up to this meeting, the Russians have been emphasizing their opposition to NATO expansion. But when he arrived at Helsinki's airport Thursday, Yeltsin made clear that he was not looking for confrontation with the U.S. president he has met with 11 times before.

``We have difficult and serious talks ahead of us,'' he said. ``I think that Bill Clinton and his team are in the same mood of looking for constructive approaches, to find compromises to all controversial questions, so that we can depart as friends as we've done in the past.''

Yeltsin expressed hope that he and Clinton would be able to ``play a peaceful note'' and ease tensions over NATO and other issues.

Clinton had a more unusual arrival in Helsinki, particularly for a White House so image-conscious that it had a movie producer on hand as one of its advance men. Because of his recent knee surgery, the president was lowered out of Air Force One in an accordion-lift Finnair catering truck, then rolled out in a wheelchair onto the red-carpeted tarmac. After greeting waiting dignitaries, he was hauled into a waiting van instead of the usual limousine.

Later, as he posed for pictures with Yeltsin - the two men seated and Clinton's bad leg extended gingerly onto the parquet floor - Clinton said, ``I think we'll work something out.''

The mood remained upbeat after the dinner. Yeltsin, according to his spokesman, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said that ``judging by the moods of both presidents, we are fully prepared to tackle tomorrow the questions that are worrying us and seek results on the most difficult issues.'' Clinton told his own aides that Yeltsin ``really came here to do business.''

At the heart of the talks is the post-Cold War security structure of Europe. In July in Madrid, NATO plans to begin talks over admitting the first set of new members - widely expected to be Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Before then, to ease some of Russia's concern about the expansion, the West is hoping to formalize relations between NATO and Russia through a special charter that would give it a voice in NATO but not a veto over military actions.

But Russia has not been mollified, and both sides were playing down any possibility of a breakthrough on the issue at this session.

``We're going to disagree on NATO enlargement, and I don't expect them to change their views, and they shouldn't expect us to change our views,'' Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel Berger, told reporters on Air Force One. ``But on this issue, we will agree to disagree.''

The two presidents also have an arms control agenda, with the United States looking for ways to reassure the Russian parliament, which has refused to ratify the 1993 Start II treaty, which calls for cutting the arsenal of the nuclear missiles by more than half by 2003.

The treaty eliminates land-based multiple-warhead missiles, which have been the backbone of the Russian nuclear force. Part of the Russian resistance stems from the fact that to keep nuclear parity with the United States, Moscow would have to destroy the multiple-warhead missiles and then build more single-warhead missiles, which it cannot afford.

To defuse this problem, the United States already has offered to begin informal discussions on a Start III treaty for deeper cuts, which would mean the Russians would not have to build the new warheads. As an additional incentive, an administration official disclosed Thursday that the United States was willing to delay for several years the treaty's 2003 deadline for Russia to destroy certain missile silos as long as the warheads were removed on time.

``If the warheads come off, we are prepared to be more flexible on the silos,'' the U.S. official said. ``It's the warheads that kill people.''

United States officials said a central objective of the summit meeting was to win a commitment from Yeltsin to move Start II through the Russian parliament this spring.

While the summit meeting originally was scheduled for Washington, it was moved to Helsinki in deference to Yeltsin's health after heart surgery and pneumonia. But it was Clinton, after last week's surgery to reattach a torn tendon in his leg, who had mobility problems. The two men joked over dinner about their respective ailments.

White House spokesman Mike McCurry said several doors inside Air Force One had been widened for Clinton's wheelchair and that the president had held a physical therapy session on collapsible parallel bars while in flight.