RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTER DISCUSSES CIS SECURITY ISSUES AT BAKU NEWS CONFERENCE

Interfax-AVN military news agency website, Moscow
31 May 06

At a news conference following the meeting of CIS defence ministers
in Baku on 31 May Russian Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister
Sergey Ivanov commented on a number of regional and international
security issues.

On the subject of Iran, Ivanov said that Russia’s proposals on
resolving the nuclear problem remained under consideration. “Russia
has made a number of well-known proposals and initiatives, which
remain on the negotiating table, and as far as I know, these were
positively received by the international community,” AVN (0700 gmt)
quoted him as saying. “Russia, on the one hand, believes that every
country should have the right to benefit from using nuclear energy
for peaceful purposes, but, on the other hand, advocates that all
international nuclear non-proliferation regimes be very strictly
observes and enforced,” he added.

Ivanov proposed bringing the adapted Conventional Armed Forces in
Europe (CFE) Treaty into force on a temporary basis from October
this year, a second AVN report said (0736 gmt). “We are fulfilling
all our obligations under the CFE, including under the flank zone
restrictions in the North Caucasus,” Ivanov stressed. Pointing out that
the adapted treaty has so far only been ratified by four countries,
including Russia, he said this was a sign of “double standards”
in the evaluation of Russian and US military presences abroad.

He saw the recent agreement allowing the USA to set up a base in
Bulgaria, which could house up to 5,000 troops, as further proof of
this. “In response to our question about the purpose of this [base] we
are told that this is an insignificant military presence,” he said. “At
the same time, demands are made that Russia withdraws its peacekeepers
from the Dniester region, where there are only 1,500 of them. Some
of them fulfil peacekeeping functions and prevent the resumption of
military actions between Moldova and the Dniester region, and some –
several hundred – guard ammunition and property depots that have been
left behind by the former 14th Army.” “We have already withdrawn all
the heavy hardware restricted under the CFE from there, but we cannot
abandon these depots, because this is Russian property and we are a
responsible state, and we cannot allow this ammunition to find a way
into somebody else’s – terrorists’ – hands. We will guard these depots
until a political settlement of the Dniester problem is achieved,”
Ivanov said.

Speaking on regional issues, the Russian defence minister raised
the possibility of sending a peacekeeping contingent into Nagornyy
Karabakh and said that the rotation of Russian peacekeepers in South
Ossetia would continue, despite complaints from the Georgian Defence
Ministry. He insisted that the withdrawal of Russian military hardware
from the Akhalkalaki base in Georgia to Armenia would not have negative
effects in the region. “This cannot lead to the destabilization of
the military-political situation in the region.

Moreover, the withdrawal of this hardware does not violate the flank
zone restrictions of the CFE,” a further AVN report (0740 gmt) quoted
him as saying.

Ivanov also told the news conference that Russia believes that the
Caspian states (Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and
Iran) should be responsible for ensuring security and order in the
areas without the intervention of third parties, AVN reported at 0855
gmt. “We must introduce order here – we must fight against poaching,
the pollution of the Caspian and the drugs trafficking, which takes
place in the region. This is all in our hands,” he said

At 0801 RIA-Novosti added that Ivanov had also commented on Russia’s
decision to pull out of a project to build An-70 military-transport
aircraft with Ukraine. “As for the An-70 project, this project is
being carried out in accordance with technical requirements set out
in 1984 and there is still no end to the work in sight. We will see
what happens next,” he said, promising the Defence Ministry would
issue a separate statement on the issue.