RUSSIA: Marking Time on Continental Security Pact

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sergei Strokan

MOSCOW, Nov 24 1995 (IPS) - Considered by western European military strategists a cornerstone of future security on the continent, the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) remains unimplemented while Russia drags its feet.

On Nov. 17, when another deadline passed without any movement by Moscow to implement its provisions, defence minister Pavel Grachev all but signalled the treaty’s demise.

“We are not going to fulfill the obligations of a non-existing state,” Grachev told reporters, pointing out that the CFE Treaty was signed on Nov. 19, 199O by the Soviet Union, which no longer exists.

Russia should have removed some heavy armaments on Nov. 17, as part of the pact’s key provisions. But Moscow is balking at such action, fearing the impact this would have on the security balance in an area like the Southern Caucasus, where it is struggling with Chechen separatists.

Two years ago Russia initiated talks with members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to revise CFE quotas. Officials here argued that provisions of the Treaty did not meet national security goals.

CFE – and a pact known as the Tashkent protocol which divided the overall quota of the Soviet Union’s armaments among the republics – gave Russia the right to place 7OO tanks, 58O armoured combat vehicles (ACV) and 1,28O heavy artillery pieces in the Northern Caucasian Okrug.

That area embraces all of Northern Caucasus, including Chechnya, Rostov and Volgograd, and in the Leningrad military region which encompasses all of northern Russia – from Pskov to Murmansk.

This quota comprises 14 per cent of the tanks, 5.5 per cent of the ACV’s, and 25 per cent of all heavy artillery pieces the pact allocates to Russia for the region west of the Urals. Russia wants to have more – especially in the troublesome North Caucasus region.

Earlier objections of Russian military to the CFE provisions had gotten nowhere. It seemed Moscow and the West were on a collision course over the treaty.

“In the end, the Clinton administration decided that the CFE was not worth giving the Republican congress the means to spoil Russia-US relations completely, especially when the Washington needs all the help and cooperation it can get to pull off a Bosnia agreement,” said Pavel Felgenhauer, a commentator in the daily Segodnya.

Thirty countries are linked under the CFE treaty.

With the expansion of NATO, the CFE has lost some of its former meaning. The Clinton administration wanted to renegotiate its terms, and applied pressure on its NATO allies in this regard.

As a result, this September NATO made a proposal that would change the limitation quotas by excluding parts of the Leningrad and North Caucasian military districts from the agreement. The Russian military found these proposals insufficient. A counter- proposal was made.

At a meeting between Defence Minister Grachev and U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry earlier this November, the two sides agreed on a compromise that would exempt certain areas from the treaty’s terms.

Russian and Americam military negotiators agreed on a joint position for changes in CFE which was officially hailed as a “glimmer of hope in bilateral relations” after the recent inconclusive summits and gloomy predictions of entering into “cold peace era”.

Delegates from all 3O states which signed the 199O Treaty agreed in Vienna last week they would try harder to resolve Russian objections over so-called flank limitations.

Responding to the statement by the signatories of the CFE Treaty Russia’s Foreign minister said Saturday “this decision corresponds to Russia’s line on adhering to the CFE treaty while taking into account the interests of our country under new conditions”.

“Today the United States and Russia are contacting all the other participants in the CFE Treaty to support their joint proposal,” said Alexander Zhilin, defence analyts with the weekly “Moscow News”.

RUSSIA: Marking Time on Continental Security Pact

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sergei Strokan

MOSCOW, Nov 24 1995 (IPS) - Considered by western European military strategists a cornerstone of future security on the continent, the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) remains unimplemented while Russia drags its feet.
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