MOSCOW, January 22 (AVN) - The Russian General Staff is holding intensive consultations on the mechanism of excessive forces reduction in the North Caucasus, a competent source in the Defence Ministry said on Monday.
The consultations are being held following the proposal of Chechnya administration chief Akhmat Kadyrov to reduce the unified federal group in the breakaway region, the spokesman told the Military News Agency. They are supervised by Chief-of-Staff Anatoly Kvashnin and involve his first deputy Colonel-General Yuri Baluyevsky, also chief of the General Staff's main operations department, as well as Colonel-General Valentin Korabelnikov, head of the General Staff main intelligence department, Lieutenant-Colonel Yuri Puzanov, commander of the Moscow military district, Lieutenant-General Nikolai Staskov, chief-of-staff of the Airborne troops, Lieutenant-General Valery Baranov, federal troops commander in the North Caucasus, and chiefs of several central and main departments of the Defence Ministry.
The units to be withdrawn from Chechnya are not yet chosen, the spokesman said. However it is already known that the reduction will have two stages. The first stage, which envisages withdrawal of 16 to 20 percent of the personnel, is to be over by April 1, 2001, leaving some 60,000 federal servicemen in Chechnya.
Of these 25,000 soldiers will serve in the 42nd motorised rifle brigade of the Defence Ministry and a separate brigade of the Interior Ministry troops stationed in the troubled republic on a permanent basis. Their term of service in the region will be extended to two years.
The second reduction stage is to begin in May, the spokesman said. According to him, Kvashnin will hold a special meeting on Monday to decide on the mechanism and scale of the federal troops reduction in the North Caucasus.