MORE RUSSIAN REACTION TO NATO ENLARGEMENT PLANS.

Russian defense minister Pavel Grachev has canceled his visit to Germany scheduled for November, during which he was to hold talks with his German counterpart Volker Ruehe and to participate in a seminar on European security. Grachev cited a crowded business agenda as the reason for the cancellation, but German government officials attributed it to "the general deterioration of the atmosphere" in relations with Russia. (2)

Reacting to the reported decision by NATO defense ministers at their Williamsburg meeting to suspend until 1997 the process of admitting new members to NATO, Russian Foreign Ministry chief spokesman Grigorii Karasin told a Moscow briefing: "We would like to have this issue removed from the agenda, not just postponed." (3)

Three days earlier, Russia canceled at the last moment its participation in the Cooperative Challenge staff exercises conducted in the Czech republic within the framework of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program. Defense ministry officials said that the decision had been "agreed upon with other ministries" (presumably the Foreign Ministry) and was due to the fact that six Central European and Baltic countries had been invited to participate without clearing the invitation with Russia in advance. (4)

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