U.S. GOVERNMENT PUZZLED BUT NOT WORRIED ABOUT RUSSIAN BUNKERS.

U.S. GOVERNMENT PUZZLED BUT NOT WORRIED ABOUT RUSSIAN BUNKERS.

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon yesterday said that the U.S. government does not understand why the Russians are continuing to work on underground bunkers, subways, and tunnels apparently designed to protect their leadership in a nuclear war but did not regard the program as a threat. He was responding to a story in the Washington Times dealing with what was said to be a recent CIA report that detailed work on such on-going construction projects as a secret subway in Moscow to Yeltsin’s dacha and two underground command posts in the Urals. One of these was said to be a deep underground complex in Yamantau Mountain, some 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) west of Moscow and the other a "nuclear-survivable, strategic command post at Kosvinsky Mountain" in the same region.

Continued work on the Yamantau complex — which was begun during the Brezhnev era — had been reported by the New York Times a year ago. Yesterday’s Washington Times article quoted unnamed U.S. defense officials as questioning how the U.S. could accept Russians claims that they did not have the money to meet the START I strategic arms destruction schedule while they were spending scarce funds on such projects. Bacon said that Russia continues "aggressively" to dismantle its nuclear weapons under the treaty and noted that digging tunnels did not add to the Russian offensive potential. (VOA, The Washington Times, April 1)

IMF to Restart Loan Payments to Russia.