MILITARY DEBTS: MORE GOVERNMENT PROMISES AND MORE PROTEST ACTIONS.

President Boris Yeltsin has ordered the government to pay off its debt to the armed forces within one month, Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Sysuyev told a Moscow news conference yesterday. He added that he was "sure" the money would be forthcoming. Concurrently, however, military families and defense workers in the Russian Far East were either conducting or planning demonstrations to dramatize their plight.

At a military airfield in Mongokhto, some 50 officer’s wives and children blocked the runway and declared they would not leave until the authorities pay the officers their back wages and allowances. At Russia’s main nuclear submarine repair yard in Bolshoi Kamen, near Vladivostock, the president’s representative to the Maritime territory — Gen. Viktor Kondratov — failed in his efforts to talk 300 workers out of their plan to block the Trans-Siberian railway for two hours today. They have not been paid in nine months. Yesterday the workers also disconnected the power to a recently-overhauled nuclear submarine to prevent it being taken from the shipyard before the navy pays for the repairs. (Russian media, June 30)

More Consolidation in Military Aviation Industries.