From OMRI Daily Digest
21 January 1997

REACTION TO PRIMAKOV-SOLANA TALKS.
Duma Defense Committee Deputy Chairman Aleksei Arbatov (Yabloko), said that Russia should not settle for any security guarantees from NATO short of joining the alliance itself, according to a 20 January Interfax report monitored by the BBC. Arbatov said Moscow "cannot be satisfied with signing another declaration or charter," adding that since Russia cannot halt NATO enlargement, it should seek to transform NATO into a multilateral security system. Duma Security Committee Chairman Viktor Ilyukhin, however, denounced the talks with Solana. The communist deputy argued that President Boris Yeltsin's foreign policy "had accustomed the West to constant concessions on our part," and charged that Solana had come to "persuade" or "maybe blackmail" Russia into accepting NATO expansion.
-- Scott Parrish