MOSCOW, February 20 (AVN) - Norway is planning to reduce three out of nine brigades in its Armed Forces brigades and later bring down the number of brigades to four, Hans Resyord, chairman of the defence committee in the Storting (parliament), said here on Tuesday.
Resyord was speaking at a meeting with Army General Andrei Nikolayev, defence committee chairman in the State Duma lower house of Russian parliament. He wanted to know Nikolayev's opinion on the strategic and conventional forces ratio, a spokesman for the defence committee told the Military News Agency.
While discussing the problem Nikolayev told his Norwegian colleague that Russia would not be able to bring down its nuclear arsenals below the level determined by international agreements in next 10 years. He also said that a number of states and alliances display a tendency to scale up the power politics. As an example he gave the US new administration's plan to deploy the National Missile Defence, as well as to militarise the peacekeeping activity. In particular, he stressed that NATO nations had demonstrated in Yugoslavia that they prefer peace compulsion to peacekeeping. As the result, a million of refugees who left their houses before the peacekeepers came was complemented by another million.
The meeting was also attended by Oeyvind Nordsletten, Norwegian ambassador to Russia, and Jorn Bjue, military attache in the Norwegian embassy.