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boviets tace cnaos in winterWASHINGTON (AP) — TheSoviet Union faces chaos this winter as the former Communist empire spins apart and President Mikhail Gorbachev is reduced to little more than a figurehead. CIA Director Robert Gates said Tuesday.The situation is dangerously unstable, Gates told the House Armed Services Committee, even as U.S. Ambassador Robert Strauss raised doubts about whether a new commonwealth of Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussiacan survive.Gates later met with the lawmakers behind closed doors and told them that Gorbachev “is losing out and may have to step down, according to the panel's ranking Republican, Rep. William Dickinson of Alabama.He will have to either resign or be a figurehead only, because he doesn’t have any force behind him, Dickinson said.Another source, speaking on condition of anonymity, agreed, saying Gates portrayed Gorbachev as in control only of the country’s foreign relations. He’s not going to rise from ashes this time, said the official.During open testimony to the committee. Gates referred to the disintegrating superpower as the “arsenal that used to be a country. He said the system controlling 30,000 nuclear weapons is being severely tested.“Severe economic conditions, including substantial shortages of food and fuel in some areas, the disintegration of the armed forces, and ongoing ethnic conflict will combine this winter to produce the most significant disorder in the former USSR since the Bolsheviks consolidated power, Gates testified.Discipline and cohesion in the formerly powerful Red Army are disintegrating, Gates said. Shortages of food, fuel and housing for troops are undermining morale and reliability of the forces is dubious. he added.Speaking to reporters in Chicago, President Bush said the United States is carefully following developments in the Soviet Union.There’s a lot at stake for the American people ... to make sure problems that affect us and the rest of the world are properlyhandled,” Bush said.White House spokesman Marlin Fltzwater said Bush has not spoken by phone with Gorbachev.Bush signed legislation Tuesday normalizing trade relations with the Soviets. Congress approved the most favored nation trade status for theSoviets just before adjourninglast month.By dramatically reducing tariffs. the accord is expected to escalate trade between the two countries, which now totals $4Muscovites watch a scale while waiting on line for food at a state-ownedshop in Moscow on Tuesday. According to Russia’s Minister of Economics and Finance Minister Yegor Gaidar, Russia would delay by twoweeks until Jan. 2 to free prices on most goods. Ukraine and Byelrussiapledged to increase deliveries of consumer goods to Russia which suffers severe shortages.44Severe economic conditions, including substantial shortages ofna fuel in some areas, the• 4food andisintegration of the armed forces, and ongoing ethnic conflict will combine this winter to produce the most significant disorder in the former USSR since the//Bolsheviks consolidated power.Robert Gates CIA director• •billion a year, most of it U.S. grain exports and imports of oil and precious metals from the Soviets.Gates told the Armed Services Committee that of immediate concern is control of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. A highly disciplined command system has been maintained until now, Gates said.“But the center is evaporating before our eyes. he said. “Those who designed the control system never anticipated this.Even reputedly fail-safe bunkers, codes and interlocks can be meaningless if the people in charge of the system “are suborned. corru pted or simply disappear. Gates said.Officials don’t know “what is involved with the black boxes, black bags, how many are there and who's got them, Dickinson said.“We haven't heard a word from the army over there, Strauss saidat a breakfast meeting of the American Committee on U.S.-Soviet Relations. “There are millions of men that are terribly unhappy and frustrated and hungry and homeless, a situation“made to order for any of several first-rate demagogues they have.”He said there is “no question that there is less than 100 percententhusiasm.People are beginning to wonder and say, “Well, no one was consulted, we weren't asked. Three people did it.’ I think that’s a problem they have in selling this new commonwealth. And it’sto be a very difficult prob-em. ... My judgment is that it will get worse before it gets better.State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said the United States had no position on whether formation of the commonwealth and dissolution of the• •Soviet Union was legal, or as Gorbachev contends, illegal.Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, speaking with reporters in Budapest, Hungary, said “goodwill and international cooperation will be required to deal with the situation.Armed Services Chairman Les Aspin, D-Wis., said his panel’s hearing was the first on how to adapt the Pentagon’s budget to the changing world.Aspin said assumptions about future spending have to be thrown out. “We’re back to the drawing board,” he said.X'\*,AoJC-;_ ■ “ .AISspFOOFAIfAT FOOD Fshow ourMAGNAVOChristmasCorbin Foiwin absoliregister alocations.Mon., Dec.rlLimit 3 PW/$10lt;More AdPurcha
Newspaper Details
Corbin Times
Corbin, Kentucky, US
Wed, Dec 11, 1991
Page 9
Full Page
Clipped by
Chrissy D.
AZ, USA 09 Jan 2022
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