Russia Creates Security Council

In an effort to streamline Russia's military and security institutions, President Boris Yeltsin put three military security agencies under a single roof and a single chief Tuesday.

The move merged the Defense Council and the State Military Inspectorate into the powerful Security Council, which advises the president. The chief of the former two bodies, Andrei Kokoshin, was named to head it.

Yeltsin's action was "aimed at a closer coordination of efforts toward reforming the whole system of defense and security," presidential spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky said.

The reform follows Yeltsin's move earlier this year to bring Russia's border guards under control of the Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB.

That step bestowed a broader mandate on the security service to handle counter-intelligence and domestic security problems, but also raised fears it could evolve into a huge KGB-type organization closed to public scrutiny.

The Defense Council was formed less than two years ago as a counterweight to the Security Council, then headed by the hawkish ex-army general, Alexander Lebed, a key Yeltsin rival in the 1996 presidential race. It served as a center for devising military reforms.

The Military Inspectorate was in charge of auditing the army, and was the main institution responsible for battling corruption in the military.

Kokoshin, the new Security Council chief, said Tuesday that his agency would focus more narrowly on security issues, dropping the economic and foreign policy mandates formerly under its control to avoid duplicating the work of other government agencies.

Written by Judith Ingram
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