Russia National Affairs
Military, Nuclear & Space Issues
GRACHEV URGES YELTSIN TO RECTIFY FINANCE PROBLEMS
[Interview with Defense Minister Pavel Grachev by unidenitifed correspondent; place and date not given; from the `I Serve Russia' progam--recorded]
[FBIS Translated Text] [Grachev] In the first half of the financial year the situation is such that for the month of June we were, for the first time this year, unable to finance the personnel of the Army and the Navy. We were able to meet only forty percent of the allowance for servicemean and wages for blue and white-collar workers.
We were practically totally unable to finance the military complex enterprises. Food, fuel, and lubricating materials have been financed to a very small extent.
The president, therefore, as they say, ought to enter the battle now, and this active efforts we will try to rectify this problem.
ARMY'S FOOD SUPPLY SAID ON `BRINK OF DISASTER'
[FBIS Transcribed Text] Moscow, July 17 (INTERFAX)--The food supply of the Russian armed forces is on the brink of disaster, chairman of the State Duma, or lower house, defense committee Sergev Yushenkov (Russia's Choice) told INTERFAX Monday.
By July, the Russian army had `even used its emergency stocks' as the supply of food for both officers and solders became a `most grave issue.'
The committee held a closed meeting Monday involving representatives of the Defense and Finance Ministries `To start stocking up with potatoes and vegetables for the winter, the army is asked to immediately pay over 500 billion rubles in advance.' Yushenkov said.
According to Yushenkov, the Defense Ministry has used about 1.7 trillion rubles for the military operations in Chechnya, making its budget very restricted.
The committee will recommend the State Duma to ask the government to find means to supply the army with food and prepare a corresponding amendment to the 1995 federal budget.
GOVERNMENT APPROVES FUNDING FOR ITER PROJECT
[Russian Federation Government directive No. 924-r, signed by V. Chernomyrdin, chairman of the Russian Federation Government; dated Moscow, 1 July 1995--from the `Document' section]
[FBIS Translated Text] With a view to honoring the Russian Federation's commitments arising from the quadripartite Agreement on the Joint Development of an International Thermonnuclear Experimental Reactor [ITER] of 21 July 1992:
1. The Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy's proposal, coordinated with the Russian Ministry of Finance, regarding the allocation of $1.55 million for the funding of the ITER project, including $0.95 million for the upkeep of Russian specialists at international project development centers and for Russian experts' short-term assignment abroad and $0.6 million for the payment of the Russian Federation's annual membership of the Joint Project Fund, is hereby adopted.
2. In 1996 the Russian Ministry of Finance is to allocate to the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy the federal budget appropriations necessary to honor the Russian Federation's commitments as mentioned in Point of this directive stemming from membership of the ITER project.
[Signed] V. Chernomydrin, chairman of the Russian Federation Government
[Dated] Moscow, 1 July 1995
RS-18 ICBM UNDER CONVERSION INTO SPACE BOOSTER
(By Anna Bakina)
[FBIS Transcibed Text] Moscow July 17 (ITAR-TASS)--The Russian Khrunichev space enterprise is converting the intercontinental ballistic RS-18 missile into a new space booster which is to be launched from the Russian northern Plesetsk cosmodrome and, possibly, from the missile base in the Far East which is also to become a space launching site.
The `Rokot' craft will use the boosters of the first and second stages of RS-18. Tass was told Monday by a spokesman of the Khrunichev enterprise.
Besides, the `Breeze' booster has been devleoped which will allow to increase the payload launched to medium orbits. Its equipment is capable of ensuring high-precision placing of spacecraft into orbit, the necessary orientation of the payload and power supplies to it during a seven-hour long space flight.
The spokesman said the new booster is planned to blast off from the Plesetsk cosmodrome and, possibly from silos at the Svobodny missile base in the Far East which is to be developed into a space launching site.
So far three successful `Rokot' test launches have been carried out from silos at the Baykonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The latest launch orbited a RADIO-ROSTO satellite for radio amateurs.
Foreign offers of a joint use of the new booster have already been received. Thus, the German Daimler Benz Aerospace company and the Khrunichev enterprise created a joint venture to market the `Rokot' for launching satellites of up to 1.8 tonnes of weight to low orbits. The first commercial launches are expected from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in the end of 1997.
FEDERAL ASSEMBLY--POSTPONEMENT OF KOZYREV DUMA SPEECH DETAILED
[From the `Diplomatic Panorama' feature by diplomatic correspondents Aleksandr Korzun, Igor Porshnev, Yevgeniy Terekhov, and others]
[FBIS Transcribed Text] Moscow, July 14 (INTERFAX)--The State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, has put off till autumn a report by Foreign Minister Andrey Kozyrev, originally scheduled for Friday.
Kozyrev, however, was ready to address the Duma on Friday, Valentina Matviyenko, a senior Foreign Ministry official told INTERFAX.
On Wednesday Duma speaker Ivan Rybkin informed the house that, at Duma's demand, Kozyrev has been invited to report on his ministry's performance during the so-called `government hour' at Friday's evening session of the house. On Thursday, however, the majority of leaders of Duma factions proposed deferring the report until the house reconvenes after the summer recess.
`The minister officially confirmed his readiness to speak at the scheduled time and made proper amendments to his schedule,' said Matviyenko, head of the ministry department for contacts with the country's regions, parliament and public organizations.
Last week Kozyrev already spoke in the Federation Council, the upper house, she said. `Apparently the lower house deputies are busy with more important matters and found no time to hear a report by the head of the top foreign policy body of Russia,' Matviyenko said ironically.
Another senior Foreign Ministry official said on Friday the postponement was `discourteous, to say the least.'
Kozyrev is not only foreign minister but also deputy of the Duma, where he represents the Murmansk Region, the official stressed in an interview with INTERFAX.
`Before canceling their decision, the deputies should have thought about the fact that a minister's schedule is very tight and that he is busy every minute of his working day. So, if there was an arrangement for Kozyrev to speak in the State Duma on July 14, (the house) should have stuck to it, if only out of respect for the extreme business of the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation,' the official said.
Moreover, Kozyrev was `carefully preparing' for the address. `Apparently in the autumn he will again have to look for spare time and make amendments to his report,' he said.
[Page: H8164]
DUMA DEPUTIES TREAT ELECTION NEWS `POSITIVELY'
[Report by Petr Zhuravlev and Gleb Cherkasov under the `Start' rubric: `Duma Elections Set for 17 December. Lower House Finishes Forming Election Laws']
[FBIS Translated Text] Boris Yeltsin has set 17 December as the date for the election of deputies to the Sixth (Second) State Duma of Russia. The signing of the corresponding edict was reported yesterday by the Kremlin press service, which had received the decision of the head of state, who is still in the hospital.
Many observers do not think there is anything surprising about the date itself--all election organizers and future rivals did set their beads at the first Sunday after 12 December. The surprising thing is that the edict should appear in July rather than in August. As a matter of fact, the election law says that the president is supposed to announce the voting day `not later' than four months in advance, meaning that it is not against the law that the elections have been called five months in advance. At the same time, this may spoil things for many parties and blocs, something Vyacheslav Nikonov (PRES) [Party of Russian Unity and Accord] cited yesterday.
Azerbaijan--Azerbaijan: Transit Point for Nuclear Materials Smuggling
[Article by N. Medzhidova: `Our Borders Are Transparent to Nuclear Materials Transshipment: Azerbaijan Accused of Being One of the Main Routes for Nuclear Materials Smuggling']
[FBIS Translated Text] The Russian media have reported that the principal routes for transshipment of atomic bomb materials from Russia and other countries pass through Ukraine and Azerbaijan. In addition, the German Bundestag's Security Commission has prepared a report based on intelligence service data regarding the disappearance of nuclear materials and their sale on the black market. According to DER SPIEGEL, former military officers and KGB agents and corrupt officers in Russia's Northern Fleet, where nuclear submarines are fueled, are involved in the smuggling of radioactive materials. They are the ones who have created this `caravan rout' between West and East. The bomb-making materials are transshipped from Russia to other countries mainly through Ukraine and Azerbaijan, continuing on through the Bosporus. All transshipment into Western Europe passes through Turkey, says DER SPIEGEL. German experts report that a `specialized international mafia' is taking shape, and that it includes Russian radioactive materials dealers. Most likely this international mafia will find its place in a black market where the buyers are Third World countries.
We asked Fikret Aslanov, head of the Radiation Medicine Department of the Azerbaijani Republic Center of Hygiene and Epidemiology, a leading specialist on radiation safety and candidate of medical sciences, to comment on this report.
`Unless steps are taken to tighten control over radioactive materials, our republic could well be accused of facilitating international terrorism and dealings in and smuggling of these particularly dangerous substances. As a rule, it is impunity that leads to the kind of violations your newspaper has described.'
One year ago in an article entitled `Azerbaijan at Risk of Becoming a Radioactive Dump' we wrote about the illegal importation of radioactive sources into the Azerbaijani Republic, and in particular about the fact that in December 1993 a plane owned by U.S. owned Buffalo Airways delivered a radioactive cargo from Amsterdam to Baku's Bina Airport in a container weighing 763 kilograms. The container was shipped by the French company Schlumberger under a contract with the Azerbaijani Republic State Oil Company.
The contract indicated that the customer and the executor held each blameless in the event of any consequences. It was unclear who was supposed to be liable in the event of a radiation accident and pollution resulting from it, something that would take a great deal of manpower and money to clean up,' said Fikret Aslanov.
The airport's customs service did not note the fact that a radioactive cargo had arrived, and customers agents, lacking dosimeters, merely looked over the shipping documents that arrived with cargo.
A similar incident occurred in February 1994. Three boxes weighing a total of 196 kilograms arrived at Bina Airport on a charter flight from the United States, addressed to a company called Ponder International Servis [sic]. According to the bill of lading, the boxes contained radioactive materials. No permit had been received to transship or import these radiation sources. Furthermore, there was no document indicating that the freight was insure in the vent of an accident or other unforeseen occurrence.
The illegality of both cases rests on the fact that importation of radiation sources into the republic was carried out without the knowledge of the republic's Ministry of Health and Ministry of Internal Affairs, which oversee imports, exports, storage, use, transportation and disposal of radioactive substances in accordance with `Radiation Safety Standards,' `Fundamental Sanitary Regulations' and the Azerbaijani Republic law `On Sanitary and Epidemiological Health.'
Another recent incident also escaped the attention of those agencies: a citizen of Azerbaijan was arrested by the Turkish security service attempting to sell 750 grams of enriched uranium. Our republic does not have any facility that would use that kind of nuclear material. Therefore it is clear that it was brought into Azerbaijan from somewhere else, passing through all border controls, then was transferred to Nakhichevan and subsequently carried to Turkey.
There is no guarantee that similar incidents will not occur over and over again. Currently the customs service does not have any dosimetric instruments, and customs agents are not informed about radioactively hazardous shipments. All these things make our borders transparent not only for radiation sources and wastes, but also, so it seems, for nuclear materials.
There is another interesting fact: according to information from the Russian media, the removal of nuclear waste from the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant and its resupply with nuclear fuel is the responsibility of the Russian Atomic Energy Agency. The question arises: by what routes are the necessary equipment and other nuclear materials being delivered to Armenia? This cannot be done by air for technical reasons. It would have been impossible to deliver these materials by rail through Georgia, because deliveries coincided exactly with the height of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict. That leaves only one direct route: through Azerbaijan.
Judging by all this, continued F. Aslanov, the transshipment of nuclear materials and fuels was carried out through Azerbaijani territory. The specially marked trains traveled through under `green light' status, without inspection. Even if Azerbaijan's government does not permit Russia to transport this freight after the reopening of rail connections, our republic is still not protected from this radiation hazard: Russia's government, under the guise of supplying military freight to the Russian separatist forces deployed in Georgia (taking part in the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict) and in order to equip six military bases in Georgian territory (under the terms of a mutual agreement with Russia) may transport nuclear fuel, radioactive materials and wastes into Armenia in specially marked trains sealed as `particularly hazardous freight.' (According to preliminary estimates, the operations of the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant will create approximately 14 metric tons of radioactive waste annually. And Armenia is not capable of disposing of that waste within its own territory).
According to F. Aslanov it is therefore essential to install automated radiation monitoring instruments at all border crossings as quickly as possible. This is the only solution to this situation. These installations will make it possible to inspect even special trains without opening them. The cost of each such instrument is $3,000-3,500--less than the price of the foreign-manufactured automobiles that crowd the streets of Baku. Our republic needs at least six of these installations to ensure the public's safety from radiation and prevent Azerbaijan from becoming a radioactive waste dump.
It is quickly becoming obvious that if emergency measures are not taken we could find ourselves facing a variety of consequences all at once: accidents like Chernobyl, and an image as a country that facilitates international nuclear terrorism.
START II HEARINGS: `PARADOXICAL SITUATION' SEEN
[Report by Gennadiy Obolenskiy: `Pentagon May State Its All']
[Page: H8165]
INTELLIGENCE SERVICE ON SECURITY OF NUCLEAR MATERIAL
[FBIS Translated Excerpt] The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service [FIS] is not aware of a single case of weapons-grade nuclear materials being smuggled out of Russia. This was stated by the press secretary of the FIS director to the Ekho Moskvy radio station.
To recall, STERN magazine alleges that Viktor Sidorenko, Russian deputy defense minister for nuclear energy, was involved in the 1994 scandal when 239 grams of weapons-grade plutonium was brought to Munich.
`There may be some minor theft from Russian civilian nuclear installations, but the military nuclear network so far appears to be sealed,' Tatyana Samolis said.
`Only an expert analysis can reveal when the radioactive materials were manufactured and where they come from. These analyses have proved that there has been no smuggling of weapons-grade nuclear materials from Russian territory,' she added. [passage omitted--reiteration of allegations that the Munich plutonium was of European origin]
Nuclear Safeguards Still Not `As We Would Like'
[Report by Yuriy Kukanov: `Rumors About a `Russian Nuclear Mafia' Are Highly Exaggerated']
St. Petersburg.--Talk about the danger of nuclear terrorism has clearly alluded to a `Russian fingerprint' in the international smuggling of radioactive materials. Asked by your ROSSIYSKIYE VESTI correspondent to comment on reports about German special services' involvement in an incident at Munich airport in which a container of plutonium 239 from Moscow was detained late August, Rolf Linkohr, president of the European Energy Foundation and member of the European Parliament, replied that he knew nothing about it. If it had occurred, he said, there would have been a government crisis in Germany.
Anyway, he said, it is immaterial where nuclear materials are being stolen--in the East or in the West. This view was supported by his foreign colleagues attending the first international meeting on cooperation between the European Union, the CIS, and the Baltic countries in the sphere of control over the use of nuclear materials, held in St. Petersburg in mid-April. The main thing, they stressed, is to combat this evil, create reliable national systems for recording nuclear materials, and strengthen the rules controlling their nonproliferation on the territory of the CIS and the Baltic countries. The EU countries were not mentioned.
We must combat it, of course. But it is not very clear how, if we do not know where the thefts are taking place. Lev Ryabev, Russian first deputy minister of atomic energy, flatly denied the story of a `Russian fingerprint' on nuclear contraband. There are rigorous standards which enable us to tell who fissile materials belong to. The data on the isotope structures and composition of the permissible impurities of the highly enriched uranium and plutonium seized in West Europe unequivocally demonstrate their non-Russian origin.
But in the Russian nuclear house, too, all is not as well as we would like. The Atomic Energy Ministry representative cited earlier had to admit that there have been 18 thefts of nuclear materials in the past 18 months.
He was referring to the `Luch' enterprise near Moscow and a Moscow scientific research institution where several hundred grams of highly enriched uranium materials were stolen. Otherwise we are dealing with natural, depleted uranium with a low, 235 isotope content, which poses no real danger. In none of these cases has stolen material crossed the state border. But it is worth pointing out that in the 50-year existence of the Soviet nuclear industry there have been no incidents of that kind.
It is difficult to block for certain all escape routes. The country's checkpoints do not appear to be equipped with the proper apparatus to enable them to detect and prevent unauthorized exports of uranium and plutonium. Storage of nuclear materials at Army depots is a worry. Three officers are currently being tried in Severomorsk, accused of stealing three fuel assemblies for submarine nuclear reactors containing 4.5 kg of uranium. This is not the first time it has happened in the Northern Fleet. But nuclear fuel for submarines is still stored at depots like potatoes: The criminals only had to contend with a standard barn-door lock.
STRATEGIC MISSILE TROOPS SAID IN FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES
[From the `Vremya' newscast]
[FBIS Translated Text] Military experts have never doubted that the design of Russian missile silos would enable them to withstand any movement of the earth's crust. After all, these silos are designed to withstand a nuclear attack by a possible enemy. However, some experts point out that by the year 2003, when the period of storage of Russian missile rocket complexes which are kept in a combat-ready condition comes to an end, the facilities where they are kept in suspension will be rather dilapidated.
However, the high command of the Russian strategic missile troops, which is responsible for all land silos and mobile missiles, says there is no concern about the technical condition of the nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, it also says that insufficient funding for new developments in the nuclear sector may lead to the complete nuclear disarmament of Russia as early as 2005, when SS-33 [as heard] type missiles will have outlived their potential.
Today, the missile troops, who are constantly monitoring the nuclear safety of Russia, live in accordance with the favorite expression of their commander in chief: anyone can be on combat alert when there is money, but try to do so without it.
Although the largest units of the Russian nuclear triad, the strategic missile troops, are supposed to use only eight percent of the Russian military budget, they say that they do not see even a small part of this money.
Yuriy Kononov, commander of the largest missile division in Europe and based near Saratov, says the danger lies not in earthquakes, but in the lack of money for the smallest part of the Russian Armed Forces. The administrative infrastructure is in disarray and there is a permanent danger of electricity power cuts at command points. It seems that Russia's nuclear safety does not depend on the design of missile silos after all. [Video shows missile silos which Russian strategic missile troops have for nuclear warheads; facility in an unidentified location, servicemen and women monitoring equipment, warheads being transported; Yuriy Kononov, identified as commander of a missile division stationed near Saratov, also shown]
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