#4
Vremya Novostei
February 6, 2002
THE PENTAGON WILL SAVE THE RUSSIAN DEFENSE SECTOR
Increase in US defense spending will yield $416 million for Russia
Author: Yury Golotyuk
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]

THE RUSSIAN DEFENSE SECTOR STANDS TO BENEFIT IF THE US CONGRESS CONFIRMS THE DRAFT BUDGET FOR 2003, WHICH INCLUDES $379 BILLION IN DEFENSE SPENDING. RUSSIA WOULD THEN RECEIVE $416 MILLION, ACCORDING TO THE NUNN-LUGAR PROGRAM.

Russian defense officials are impatiently waiting for the US budget for 2003 to be confirmed. This time the matter concerns not only the usual desire to get additional money from the Russian government for re-arming our own military forces, citing the unprecedented growth in the Pentagon's spending. Even though the draft budget submitted to Congress by President Bush this week does provide for a $48 billion increase in defense spending, bringing it to a record $379 billion. Nevertheless, the Russian defense establishment is not so much concerned about the fate of this huge sum, as about the successful confirmation of just a small part of it - $416 million, allocated to the so-called Nunn-Lugar program. This money is meant for helping Russia to destroy excess stockpiles of nuclear weapons. And this sum is quite considerable for the Russian military establishment, though it's only a fraction of one percent of US defense spending. It is equivalent to around 20% of the Russian defense budget.

The Nunn-Lugar program was launched as far back as 1992, and in summer 1999 both the parties agreed to extend it for another seven years. According to the Foreign Ministry, US funding amounted to around $1.7 billion over the first seven years. However, the US Defense Department announced an even more impressive figure - according to them, the total sum of financial aid to Russia from 1992 to 2001 was $4 billion. But that included not only the Nunn-Lugar program, but also around thirty other joint programs, within the framework of which Americans helped us to dismantle ICBMs, destroy their launch pads, dismantle strategic bombers and nuclear-powered submarines, secure safe transportation of nuclear warheads and their storage, eliminate our chemical weapons arsenals, and so on.

At a meeting of the International Conference on Disarmament in Geneva at the end of January, the official representative of Russia,Leonid Skotnikov, proudly announced that Moscow had carried out its obligations on schedule - by December 31, 2001 - and, moreover, reduced the number of "deployed strategic carriers" and "weapons for them" by much more than stated in the agreement: the Russian military retained only 5,518 warheads, instead of 6,500.

However, President Bush has now become a threat to the honeymoon in Russian-US relations. The new president announced his intention to reconsider the programs for funding Russia's disarmament. Of course, Americans were satisfied with the fact that Moscow is cutting its nuclear arsenals; however, they were concerned about whether the Russians might be "fooling" them, using American money to build up Russia's military forces. But the strict accounting system introduced at the demand of the United States seemed to confirm that the money was indeed being used for disarmament purposes. However, Moscow did not let American monitors check everything, everywhere.

Help came from a totally expected sources: the CIA spoke out in favor of the Nunn-Lugar program. Last week the CIA submitted a report to Congress on danger of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, expressing concern about "leaks of Russian technologies to Iran, India, China and Libya." The CIA promised Congress to spy on Russia even more: "a great deal of attention will be given to watching Russia in the sphere of distribution". At the same time, they advised continuing with the aid programs, since the Russian "defense, biological and nuclear sectors are short of money"; so it would be better for the United States to help Russia, rather than having Russia seek "clients" elsewhere.

(Translated by Daria Brunova)

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