SECURITY COUNCIL SECRETARY STRENGTHENED?

According to a commentary published by Kommersant-Daily on May 28, the recent creation by President Boris Yeltsin of a State Commission for Military Development (see the Monitor, May 29) may represent not an effort to limit the authority of Security Council Secretary Andrei Kokoshin, but rather an affirmation of Kokoshin’s continued strong standing in the Kremlin. The Russian daily reports that the commission is a new version of a previous agency that had been chaired by then Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. The original commission was abolished in March of this year when the Russian Defense Council was dissolved and folded into the Security Council. According to Kommersant-Daily, Kokoshin himself requested that the commission be recreated because he saw it as a useful link between the president’s office, the cabinet and Russia’s various military and security agencies–and thus a “drive chain” of military reform efforts. Kirienko is to chair the reborn commission. (Itar-Tass, May 27; Kommersant-Daily, May 28)

OVERDUE JUSTICE ON CRIMES OLD AND NEW.