U.S. CRITICIZES COMMENTS BY BELARUSAN PRESIDENT ON NUCLEAR SILOS.

A U.S. State Department spokesman on June 30 described as "very disturbing" an accusation, voiced three days earlier by President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, that the U.S. has failed to live up to an agreement to provide money for the dismantling of former Soviet nuclear missile silos in Belarus. John Dinger pointed out that some $40 million in Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) funds had not been released to Belarus this year because the U.S. government could not certify that Belarus had complied with the human rights requirements called for in the law that set up the CTR program. He said that Lukashenka’s statement failed to mention "that the government of Belarus’s lack of respect for internationally recognized standards of human rights forced the United States to reach such a decision [to withhold the funds]." Dinger added that the funds could still be made available, but "only if we are able to certify Belarus for human rights compliance." (State Department press release, July 1)

Landmark Yeltsin-Aliev Meeting Faces Contentious Issues.