From: fweir.ncade@rex.iasnet.ru

Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 13:15:49 (MSK)

For the Hindustan Times

From: Fred Weir in Moscow

MOSCOW (HT May 8) -- Russia has adopted a new national security doctrine which identifies internal instability as the main threat facing the country, followed closely by the eastward expansion of the Western military alliance NATO.

The four-part document outlining Russia's response to the challenges of the post-Cold War world was adopted Wednesday at a meeting of the Security Council, a Kremlin advisory body comprising 17 top military and state officials.

"The country needs a uniform political concept called upon to consolidate society on the basis of fundamental national interests and values," Russian President Boris Yeltsin told the meeting.

"We want Russia to become a truly great and at the same time democratic power, to have a socially-oriented market economy," he said.

Details of the 30-page document will only be released later this month, but experts say its fundamentally new conclusion is that domestic problems, such as crime, corruption, regional separatism and mass poverty, will pose the main danger to Russia's security into the next century.

The new doctine urges "strengthening Russian federalism", promoting economic growth and building "public concord" as the main directions for reviving Russia as a global power, they say.

In remarks broadcast before the meeting, Mr. Yeltsin said that escalating market reforms and consolidating democracy in Russia would be key elements of the plan.

"The most important thing is to make the reform more efficient and reduce to a minimum the misunderstandings and the numerous mistakes made during its implementation," he said.

Russia has undergone a stormy passage since the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Its economy has shrunk by nearly 50 per cent, poverty has gripped almost a third of the population while crime and corruption have raged out of control.

Power struggles in Moscow have frequently left government virtually paralyzed. On one occasion, in 1993, a political dispute erupted into gunfire between antagonistic parliamentary and presidential forces. A bitter 2-year war between Russian troops and secessionist fighters in the southern republic of Chechnya left 100,000 people dead and underlined the severe crisis of Russian federalism.

In de-emphasizing the military aspects of national security the new doctine makes a sharp break with past Soviet views of the world. But in practice it merely confirms a trend toward downgrading the role of the armed forces that has been evident in Moscow for some time.

Over recent years the Russian army has been starved of government funding and left to decay while the internal troops run by the Interior Ministry, and other armed agencies concerned with domestic security, have enjoyed a solid boom in state support.

In an interview with the army daily Krasnaya Zvezda this week, Mr. Yeltsin confirmed government plans to cut state military spending by a further 20 per cent this year and urged the armed forces to root out corruption and crime from its ranks.

The new document will reportedly re-oriente Russian military doctrine to take account of planned NATO expansion into the former Soviet sphere. Three eastern European countries -- Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic -- are slated to join the Western alliance soon, leaving Russia largely isolated on the sidelines.

Moscow has enjoyed no success in persuading the West to transform NATO into a non-military organization or, failing that, to grant Russia a veto over new members and force deployments.

Russian officials say they hope to sign an agreement with NATO on May 27 which will address at least some of their concerns, including controls on stationing nuclear weapons in new NATO states and giving Moscow some rights of consultation over alliance decisions that affect it.

In his interview with Krasnaya Zvezda, Mr. Yeltsin said that Russia would counter NATO expansion by paying closer attention to neighbouring post-Soviet states, particularly Belarus, with which Russia is slated to sign a sweeping unification treaty on May 23.

He added that Russia would move closer to nearby Asian countries in response to isolation in the West.

"We shall strengthen cooperation with neighbouring states, in the first place, with China," he said.

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Johnson's Russia List

8 May 1997

djohnson@cdi.org