President Putin to hold conference on military allowances

Russian President Vladimir Putin will today hold a conference to discuss military allowances, the president said at a Kremlin meeting with Cabinet Ministers. According to him, "we should finally eliminate all controversies that still exist between the departments." "All these problems should be solved as soon as possible," he said. In connection with the actively launched drafting of the 2003 budget, the head of state also called on government officials to pay attention to the necessity to "think in advance" about funding the liquidation of "stockpiles of old idled armaments." According to him, they form "a ballast" and "we no longer need them," but "they very often pose and may be fraught with environmental threats." The president stressed that this primarily concerned chemical weapons and other types of outdated armaments.