MOSCOW. Oct 17 (Interfax-AVN) - The defence committee of the State Duma lower house of Russian parliament will vote against the proposal to increasing allocations for the national defence article by RUR1.5bn (USD50.74m) at the expense of agriculture, committee chairman Andrei Nikolayev told Interfax-Military News Agency on Wednesday.
The proposal was made by Vladislav Reznik, deputy chairman of the State Duma committee on budget and taxes.
"There is no doubt about the necessity to increase the country's defence budget but not at the expense of agriculture. We are enough familiar with the situation in villages to take something away from farmers. That is why the Duma defence committee will not agree to confront servicemen and farmers," Nikolayev said.
Reznik's proposal was first voiced at a session of the budget and taxes committee held behind closed doors and devoted to the 2002 draft budget. Reznik proposed to take the money from the Agriculture article and use them for paying monetary allocations to servicemen. The budget indeed lacks RUR2bn (USD67.66m) for that purpose but the problem should be solved in a different way, Nikolayev stressed.