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by Nicolas Miletitch
MOSCOW, July 14 (AFP) - Russia's military top brass were at daggers drawn Friday over proposed far-reaching cuts to the country's massive nuclear arsenal. President Vladimir Putin pointedly refused to step in to settle the bitter feud that burst into the public arena Friday, with Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev branding the scheme a "crime against Russia." Chief of Staff General Anatoly Kvashnin on Wednesday presented a radical reform of Russia's creaking military apparatus that would see the strategic nuclear rocket force stripped down from 22 to just two divisions. Kvashnin's plan would also reduce by a factor of seven the number of missile silos and merge the greatly reduced rocket force with the air force. Irate, Sergeyev told the Interfax news agency that any such reorganization would have to "take place without him," although he later denied he was threatening to quit over the issue. Russia's nuclear forces, which form the backbone of Russia's new defense doctrine adopted in April, should not be "relegated to the second division," Sergeyev told the news agency. Kvashnin planned to reorganize Russia's rocket forces along exactly the same lines as proposed by the United States during the current round of strategic arms reduction talks, fumed Sergeyev. "Whose interests are the chiefs-of-staff defending? They are supposed to be the brains of the armed forces," he complained. But within hours of the report hitting news wires, Sergeyev rushed out a statement via the ITAR-TASS news agency, denying he had threatened to quit if the Kvashnin plan was approved: "I was misunderstood. I didn't intend to issue any such threat at all." However, Putin pointedly refused to back his defense minister in the row when quizzed by journalists during an arms fair in the Urals region. "Right now there is no reorganization of the strategic forces. Military specialists are discussing this. It's a vital question on which the country's future depends," Putin said. "Whatever decision is taken, it will strengthen the country's ability to defend itself," he said. The Kremlin chief however gave his minister an implicit slap on the wrists, regretting the row had been aired in public, adding that military reform could not be subjected to "popular consultation." However, Sergeyev won support from the current head of the rocket force, General Vladimir Yakovlev, who said the reform "threatens to reduce Russia to the role of a second-rate nuclear power," the AVN military news agency said. The reform would also rob Moscow of "the possibility of making an adequate response in the case of a deployment" of the US national missile defense system vehemently opposed by Moscow. Military experts say Kvashnin, 53, is backed by the presidential administration and the increasingly influential Security Council, a Kremlin advisory body on which the chief of staff recently won a seat. "A young, energetic chief of staff wants to become minister of defense and for that he's prepared to set the house on fire," said Alexander Golts, a military specialist with the Itogi news weekly. Sergeyev was kept in his post by Putin when he assumed office after the March presidential elections, apparently reluctant to fire his defense minister while military operations were ongoing in the republic of Chechnya. However, according to Golts, conventional weapons makers are keen to oust Sergeyev, a former head of the nuclear rocket force, and have the backing of Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who oversees Russia's Soviet-era military-industrial complex. |
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