Russian Security Council Discusses Military Exports

A high-ranking source in the office of the Russian Security Council has told RIA Novosti that the drafting of mechanisms for the state to provide practical support for military exports will be the focus of attention at a session of the Security Council, which will be held in the Kremlin and chaired by Vladimir Putin on Wednesday. The source said that everybody agreed that the state should have the defining role in military-technical co-operation. According to him, the state's monopoly in this form of activity was linked, "above all, with issues of national security." RIA Novosti learnt that the country's leadership paid constant attention to the problems of this kind of co-operation and export control. The adoption of the 1998 law on military-technical co-operation with foreign countries and the Concept of this co-operation, which was approved this year, testify to this. The Security Council representative said that the military-technical "vertical" had operated effectively this year: from the president to the government and the appropriate ministries to the state middlemen, in the form of Rosoboroneksport and specialist exporters. The Security Council believes that the situation in this sphere is "on the whole favourable." Today's Security Council session will be dedicated to the need to adopt decisions for the long-term and to work out specific measures of state support for military-technical co-operation. Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, whose brief is to oversee the area, will deliver a report at the session.