MOSCOW. Jan 21 (Interfax-AVN) -Russia's international commitments relating to the participation of its servicemen in UN-led peacekeeping operations may be violated, a military diplomat told Interfax-Military News Agency in Moscow Friday.
"This may happen because of the fact that all expenditures related to peacekeeping will be incurred entirely by the Defense Ministry, while no additional funding is envisaged for the purpose," he said.
He explained that the UN sent $16 million to Russia for the four years of its aviation task force staying in Sierra Leone. However, the Defense Ministry got only one tenth of the sum for airlifts performed during the rotation, and a $60,000 compensation for re-painting helicopters and vehicles white. The remaining sum was included into the state budget as profit under the law currently in effect.
In this light, the Defense Ministry was forced to continually reject UN requests to provide military contingents, including aviation, engineering, medical and logistics task forces, to UN missions in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Congo. Neither did it expand the Russian contingent in Sierra Leone as was planned.
The source added that the present-day Russian task force in Sierra Leone is the only detachment of the country's Armed Forces involved into UN-led peacekeeping efforts. As soon as the operation is over, only military observers will represent the country in UN missions (currently there are 86 officers).
The source recalled that Russia committed itself to have four medium MI-8MT Hip helicopters and one engineering company in three-month readiness for participation in peacekeeping operations of the UN. "However, in light of the aforementioned problems, Russia's international commitments may be violated," he said.
According to him, a number of East European countries and CIS member-states have changed the procedure of using the compensations from the UN and allowed their use in the interests of national defense ministries. "This already resulted in their more active involvement into UN peacekeeping operations," he said, adding that Ukraine, for instance, has more than 800 servicemen as part of the UN missions in Sierra Leone and Lebanon.
He also said that the UN administration has expedited the diplomatic effort in search for military contingents, including aviation task forces, for the planned deployment of UN stabilization forces in Liberia.
"The expertise of the aviation task force in Sierra Leone shows that Russia's participation in such peacekeeping operations is profitable not only in political terms, but in the economic sense as well," he said.