Yamantau Privately Worries U.S. Officials

[Guest guest]

Yamantau Privately Worries U.S. Officials, State Says It Is For

" Legitimate

Defense Purposes "

 

http://afpc.org/rrm/rrm124.htm

 

Huge Secret Military Project in Urals Privately Worries U.S. Officials

But State Department Says It Is For " Legitimate Defense Purposes "

April 16

 

One of President Yeltsin's advisers told a news conference April 15 that

the

nuclear reactor deal with Iran will indeed give Teheran access to

technology

needed to build nuclear weapons, OMRI Daily Digest reports. The

statement is

made by Aleksei Yablokov, chief of the Ecological Safety Commission of

the

presidential Security Council.

 

Inside Yamantau Mountain in the Urals, the Russian military is building

a

gigantic underground project which the U.S. believes is a supersecret

weapons facility or a nuclear bomb-proof command-and-control center, the

New

York Times reports. " We can't say with confidence what the purpose is,

and

the Russians are not very interested in having us go in there, " a senior

 

U.S. official is quoted as saying. " It is being built on a huge scale

and

involves a major investment of resources. The investments are being made

at

a time when the Russians are complaining they do not have the resources

to

do things pertaining to arms control. "

 

The New York Times, cites another U.S. official with access to

intelligence

reports with this assessment of the Yamantau project: " The complex is as

big

as the Washington area inside the Beltway. " Sovetskaya Rossiya reported

that

the project includes " construction of a railroad, a modern highway, and

towns for tens of thousands of workers and their families. "

 

" It is a possible command and control center, " a senior administration

figure says about Yamantau. " It is a possible project to maintain the

capability to carry out wartime production after a nuclear strike. It is

a

possible storage area for weapons they do not want us to know about. If

it

is only command and control, why aren't they more transparent about it?

It

would help to know more. " [Editor's note: Former Reagan National

Security

Council Director of Arms Control Sven Kraemer warned about the Yamantau

project in a Strategic Review article in 1994.]/P>

 

An unnamed Pentagon official tells the New York Times: " The toughest

question we can get from the Congress when we ask them for funds to help

 

disarm and dismantle the Russian strategic arsenal is why they are using

 

their meager rubles to build such a thing as Yamantau mountain. "

 

Not all administration officials are alarmed about the nuclear command

center. According to the New York Times, " Some officials believe the

Russian

project may even make the military balance more stable by reducing the

Russian military's worries about a surprise attack. "

 

April 17

The State Department says the Yamantau project appears to be within the

framework of " modernization programs . . . required for legitimate

self-defense " and will not jeopardize U.S. aid programs, the Washington

Times reports. The administration has certified that all Russian

military

modernization is for " legitimate defense purposes. "

 

" President Clinton's trip to Moscow this week may produce the greatest

transfer of U.S. nuclear secrets to the Kremlin since the Rosenbergs, "

Center for Security Policy director Frank Gaffney writes in the

Washington

Times. " A decision document prepared for the president's consideration

offers, among other ill-advised concessions, what might be called the

'Rosenberg Option'--a proposal for the United States to provide Boris

Yeltsin's government with the crown jewels of the American nuclear

weapons

program. " Part of the administration's rationale is to help Russia

comply

with the yet-unratified Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Gaffney

summarizes, " the United States is poised to offer Russia nuclear

capabilities that it could otherwise have only dreamed of stealing so

that

Moscow will promise to agree to arms control terms that we will be

unable to

determine they are observing. "

 

http://afpc.org/rrm/rrm124.htm