Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said Friday that disputes among the former Soviet republics over military assets such as the Black Sea Fleet could lead to conflicts over their nuclear inventory.
"To date, it hasn't," Cheney told BBC radio, praising the former republics for acting very responsibly over control of nuclear weapons.But he said the United States was watching "very carefully" the dispute between Russia and Ukraine over control of the former Soviet Black Sea Fleet "because a dispute over military assets could slop over and affect the nuclear inventory."
On the issue of the U.S. military, Cheney said the United States needs to be "cautious and prudent" in planned defense cuts.
Defense cuts will be announced during President Bush's State of the Union address, but they will be tempered by "changes in the world's real security environment," Cheney said.