October 18, 2001	Thursday	Rajab 30, 1422

MOSCOW, Oct 17: Russia announced on Wednesday it would close its spy station in Cuba by the end of the year, and then gave the US even more reason to celebrate by confirming the shutdown of a naval base in Vietnam.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in unveiling the dual retreat from two listening bases that had sparked rows with Washington ever since the height of the Cold War, stressed that the decision was a financial, not a political one.

Putin told a high-level meeting in the defence ministry that Russia had to concentrate on quality as opposed to quantity in restructuring its cash-strapped, outsized armed forces if it wanted to keep pace “in a world that is changing fast.”

The Russian leader ordered a “step-by-step” increase in spending on military equipment, which would amount to 900 million dollars in 2002, a hike in expenditure that “will increase every year,” Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said after the meeting Wednesday.

At the same time, the size of the Russian military would be cut by 90,000 personnel this year, and a total of 300,000 by 2006, from its official level of 1.2 million servicemen — although Western experts claim the current figure is nearer to 850,000.

The US-led anti-terrorist campaign in Afghanistan, with its “significant military component,” had forced Russia to update its priorities, Putin said.

However, Putin stressed that the decision to withdraw the radar base did not mean that Russia was planning to scale down its cooperation with Cuba, a former Soviet satellite during the Cold War.

“We advocate a full lifting of the economic blockade against Cuba,” Putin said.

Putin also confirmed that Russia would withdraw its Cam Ranh Bay military base from Vietnam, starting from 2001.

Putin cited financial reasons for the decision to dismantle “this year” the spy station in the United States’ backyard, according to Russian chief of staff General Anatoly Kvashnin.

“It costs 200 million dollars a year in rent to Cuba. For that amount, we can buy and launch 20 military satellites into space,” Kvashnin said, explaining Putin’s decision.

Around 1,500 Russian engineers, technicians and soldiers currently observe submarine activity from the base at Lourdes at a total cost of 300 million dollars a year to Russia, according to military experts.

Washington says Moscow is using the facilities to spy on the United States.

“As a result of dismantling the radar station in Cuba this year, and withdrawing the troops from the Vietnamese base at Cam Ranh from January 1, we will be able to resolve a lot of financial matters,” Kvashnin quoted Putin as saying.

Originally constructed by the United States during the Vietnam War, Cam Ranh has become Russia’s most important military installation in southeast Asia.

In its heyday in the early 1980s, before Mikhail Gorbachev cut back Moscow’s global role, the base served as a Soviet listening post covering most of the Far East, including Japan, and as a runway for the Soviet nuclear fleet, according to intelligence sources.

But in recent years it has received few port calls from Russian ships and its intelligence role has greatly diminished, analysts say.

But Putin said Wednesday that the military cutbacks were inevitable if Russia was to improve efficiency.

“The development of the armed forces to a new technological level requires money, and we are going to have to find it,” said the Russian leader, who warned that the country’s air force and navy could only afford to undertake 10 percent of the training necessary to be combat ready.”

Putin said that unless Russia carried out urgent reforms of the military, its troops would be left “knowing how to fight in theory, but not in practice.”—AFP