RUSSIA AND SECURITY IN THE BALTIC REGION

Russia's policy toward countries in the Baltic region attracts close attention around the world. Alexander Avdeyev expounded on this policy in an interview with the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Military Parade magazine, Yuri Churyanov.

Russia is ready to cooperate with the Baltic countries with a view to actively countering risks and threats that may arise in the 21st century and strengthening stability through reliable trust and partnership. These ideas underlie the package of proposals put forward 
by President Boris Yeltsin late last year.

Russian diplomats are engaged in active dialog with all countries in the Baltic region to promote Russia's ideas and discuss other countries' proposals. We would like these efforts to result in measures that will strengthen stability and build confidence in the region and that will become an integral part of the future European security architecture.

Yuri D. Maslyukov

The active work of the Council of the Baltic Sea States also promotes stability in the region.

Not long ago, Russia came out with a package of proposals for strengthening stability and developing cooperation in the Baltic region. Some of them refer to European, including Baltic, security. Russia's position rests on the principles of equality and indivisibility of security. In connection with this, we cannot agree with some politicians in Latvia and Estonia who say their countries belong to the so-called "gray zone" because they are unable to ensure their own national security. These countries have expressed their wish to join NATO.

We have a different view on the situation in the Baltic region. As I have already said, we believe that there are no foreign-policy reasons for destabilization in the region. Russia is ready to cooperate with the Baltic countries with a view to actively countering risks and threats that may arise in the 21st century and strengthening stability through reliable trust and partnership. These ideas underlie the package of proposals put forward by President Boris Yeltsin late last year. The proposals provide for ways to ensure stability and security in the region on a variety of levels.

At the first, bilateral, level, Russia proposes carrying out a wide range of measures to broaden cooperation with the Baltic countries in the customs and border-guarding fields. We are ready to thoroughly consider proposals for building confidence in the military field and bringing down the thresholds of notification, set in the Vienna document, with regard to planned military activities along Russia's borders with Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. This idea that was first voiced by Estonia.

At the second stage, which provides for cooperation according to the "three-plus-one" formula of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia on the one hand and Russia on the other, the four countries could work out a series of confidence-building measures. Stronger confidence is the essence of President Yeltsin's initiatives last year, in which he offered guarantees to the three Baltic states. We understand such guarantees in their present-day meaning, i.e. guarantees through confidence. We need transparency of intentions in our bilateral relations with the Baltic states, clarity of one another's plans, and prevention of any kinds of activities that may be regarded by Russia or its neighbors as a potential threat. In international law this is called "negative guarantees." We do not mind if NATO, the United States, individual neighboring countries or other countries of the Baltic region join us in efforts to ensure security for the three Baltic states. Naturally, these commitments must be based on the international legal documents of the OSCE.

The third level of efforts to build regional stability and security would require all countries in the region to take collective measures to strengthen their military, political, economic and ecological security, and to cooperate in navigation, communications, air security, and so on.
The fourth level of the proposal provides for working out regional principles and concrete commitments, which must be brought together in one document.

The Russian government has announced that it has begun to implement its plans to reduce its troops in northwestern Europe by 40 percent. This is a very large figure. The reduction must be completed by the start of 1999. This is an important signal to our neighbors in the region that Russia does not expect risks or threats from the northwest and that it cannot pose a military or some other threat to them.
So, the talk of the "gray zone" and insufficient security for Russia's neighbors is proven to be groundless.

Russia's proposals include collective measures to regulate the airspace (this proposal was first put forward by former Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme), the establishment of a hot line between the commander of the Russian troops in Kaliningrad and military headquarters of Baltic countries, and other moves.

Russian diplomats are engaged in active dialog with all countries in the Baltic region to promote Russia's ideas and discuss other countries' proposals. We would like these efforts to result in measures that will strengthen stability and build confidence in the region and that will become an integral part of the future European security architecture.

We believe that 21st century threats to Europe are new and are not related to East-West military confrontation. At the start of the next century, the main destabilizing factors will include aggressive nationalism, which is already gaining momentum, and attempts to waive commitments with regard to the nonproliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons and missile technologies. The danger of terrorism, drug and arms trafficking, and unregulated migration, is growing. The Baltic region will come face to face with new risks, as will the whole of Europe, and we will have to build a common security system capable of countering these dangers.

The peculiarity of the future risks is that they cannot be removed with the help of military instruments: hence the growing role of peacemaking efforts, preventive diplomacy, especially when the matter at issue is ethnic conflicts, and new and efficient forms of interaction in combating crime. There is much room for cooperation in the Baltic region, but this cooperation will be successful only if the region is rid of such sad phenomena as the violation of rights of ethnic minorities, specifically ethnic Russians in Latvia and Estonia. There can be no confidence in politics or security, and there can be no stability, where human rights are infringed.