…BUT GERMANS FEAR INCREASED SPYING HAS ALREADY BEGUN.

An earlier report in a Russian newspaper suggests that President Yeltsin’s remarks at the Security Council meeting yesterday may represent the culmination, rather than the initiation, of a new aggressiveness in Russian economic espionage. Moscow News reported February 4 that at a series of secret meetings preceding yesterday’s meeting, Yeltsin had emphasized that the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) could make an important contribution to boosting the Russian economy. The report goes on to describe consternation in Germany over what counterintelligence officers there describe as increasingly specialized SVR operations in the area of economic espionage. According to the report, the German officers charge that the SVR maintains a special department for this purpose which supplies economic intelligence not only to the Russian government, but to commercial firms enjoying the patronage of high-level government officials. (5) Late last month the head of German counterintelligence complained publicly over what he claimed were Russia’s increased activities in Germany. A Russian SVR spokeswoman denied the charge. (see Monitor, January 30)

China to Purchase SU-27s Up Front.