LUKASHENKA, CHERNOMYRDIN CHART RUSSIA-BELARUS UNION PROGRAMS.

Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Belarusan president Alyaksandr Lukashenka chaired on December 2 in Minsk a session of the Russia-Belarus Union’s Executive Committee. They resolved that the Union’s Supreme Council — which is co-chaired by Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Lukashenka — shall increase the frequency of its meetings and hold them every third month; while the Executive Committee shall convene every other month.

The session approved the Union’s first-ever annual budget at 600 billion Russian rubles for 1998. Russia shall contribute 65 percent and Belarus 35 percent of this relatively modest sum. The Union budget is intended to finance mainly joint industrial programs, but not Russian fuel deliveries to Belarus. On that subject, Lukashenka cited Chernomyrdin as saying that Belarus may have as much Russian gas as it can pay for. At the same time, however, Chernomyrdin urged public opinion at home — and implicitly the Russian media — to "separate the development of the Russia-Belarus Union from politics" and "recognize the main thing — Russia’s strategic interests." Belarus-Russia bilateral trade turnover is set to rise by 30 percent in 1997 compared to last year, in marked contrast to trends elsewhere in the CIS, assuming that the transit trade is not included.

Russia’s first deputy defense minister and chief of the general staff, Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, and his Belarusan counterpart, Gen. Mikhail Kozlov, participated in the meeting and approved a draft concept of common defense. The Russian General Staff’s Main Department for Operations, Lt. Gen. Yury Baluyevsky, stated at the meeting that this concept can serve as a model for the creation of "regional defense systems" in other areas of the CIS. The idea forms part of Moscow’s broader goal to set up "coalitional forces" that would place troop contingents of newly independent states under Russian command in several regions of the former USSR. The Russia-Belarus common defense concept is to be submitted to Yeltsin and Lukashenka for final approval at their impending meeting in Moscow. (Russian agencies, December 2-3)

Chernomyrdin’s remarks, as well as the decision to increase the frequency of meetings between Russia’s leaders and Lukashenka, suggest that Moscow will continue ignoring Lukashenka’s dictatorial excesses for the sake of "strategic interests." As the Belarusan democratic opposition often points out, Yeltsin-Lukashenka meetings and other Kremlin honors to the Belarusan president help strengthen his regime at home. At the same time, Moscow remains reluctant and in any case unable to offer its ally more than token economic subsidies. Lukashenka will undoubtedly continue clamoring for more sizable economic relief.

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