CIS to treble joint air defence budget for 2005

CIS to treble joint air defence budget for 2005

Interfax-AVN military news agency web site, Moscow
16 Sep 04

Astana Kazakhstan, 16 September: The budget of the CIS joint air
defence system will be increased almost three-fold in 2005.

“On Wednesday 15 September heads of CIS member states decided to
earmark R2.3bn (79m dollars) for developing the CIS joint air defence
system in 2005,” Col Gennadiy Surkov, secretary of the air defence
system coordination committee of the CIS Council of Defence Ministers,
told Interfax-Military News Agency on Thursday.

According to him, it is an almost three-fold increase over the R800m
(27m dollars) allocated in 2004 to this end. Surkov also said that
in 2005 the joint air defence system development programme envisaged
joint operational (tactical) exercises, as well as a number of other
joint ventures.

At the present time the CIS joint air defence system incorporates the
following seven states: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Ukraine participates in the CIS
joint air defence system programme on a bilateral basis.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress