Russian President Boris Yeltsin dissolved the Security Ministry and created a new internal security unit Tuesday, saying the successor to the KGB had proved to be "unreformable."
Yeltsin's decree was his first major move in response to the defeat of reformers at the hands of ultranationalists in parliamentary elections Dec. 12. The ministry had been blamed for not warning Yeltsin of the voter support for extremist leader Vladimir Zhir-in-ovsky.It was not immediately clear how the new body would differ from its predecessor. The head of the dissolved agency, Nikolai Golushko, was named to head the new one, the Federal Service of Counterintelligence.
"At the present time there is a lack of a strategic concept for the state security of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Security. . . . Counterintelligence activity was weakened," Yeltsin's decree said.
After the failed coup by Communist hard-liners in August 1991, the KGB was split into foreign and domestic units. The Security Ministry was responsible for counterintelligence and internal security.
The Security Ministry had been in turmoil for months, and some of its members joined hard-liners who occupied the Russian parliament after it was dissolved by Yeltsin on Sept. 21.
Yeltsin earlier this year fired Security Minister Viktor Barannikov, who later went over to the side of the hard-liners and is now awaiting trial for his role in the October violence.
"Attempts in the last several years to forcibly reorganize (the ministry) were of an outward, cosmetic character," Yeltsin's decree said.
Some shake-up of Yeltsin's government had been expected following the disastrous loss of the reformers in the elections, but the changes had been expected to involve those responsible for economic reforms.
Yeltsin also declared the victory of extreme nationalists in parliamentary elections a "protest against poverty," and ordered Moscow officials Tuesday to pay more attention to the poor.
It was Yeltsin's first public comment on the victory of Vladimir Zhirinovsky's ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party in the Dec. 12 elections, which shocked Russian reformers and worried the West.
Yeltsin's long silence about the elections has left the country wondering whether his commitment to reform is wavering. His brief remarks Tuesday did not clarify whether he plans to proceed full speed with reforms or slow them down.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials on Monday conceded publicly for the first time that President Clinton and his aides were shaken enough by nationalist gains in Russian parliamentary elections to begin a review of key elements in policy toward Moscow.
The Clinton administration's two top diplomats in charge of policy toward the former Soviet Union, the State Department's Strobe Talbott and the National Security Council's Leon Feurth, told reporters that Washington will be revisiting the way in which its massive financial aid program is being implemented.
Washington is not abandoning what Secretary of State Warren Christopher has described as one of the "pillars" of its foreign policy, they said, which is pumping billions of dollars into Russia to help ease the painful transition to democracy and free markets.
But the Russian ballot was a "classic protest vote" that demands U.S. consideration, Talbott said.
In a related development, a Ukrainian official denied Tuesday that Kiev has begun implementing the START I nuclear disarmament treaty, despite its decision to take 17 of its advanced SS-24 nuclear missiles off military alert.
"This is not a program of liquidation but rather a program of deactivization," Deputy Foreign Minister Boris Tarasiuk told reporters. "Ukraine is not yet obligated to fulfill the START I treaty."
An official announced Monday that Ukraine had deactivated 17 of
its SS-24 missiles and would take a further 20 off military alert by the end of 1993, in what is being seen as a major concession to Western countries concerned at Kiev's apparent unwillingness to surrender its nuclear inheritance.
The move came after talks between Russia, Ukraine and the United States that culminated in a preliminary agreement to compensate Ukraine for giving up its nuclear arms - a key condition set by Kiev for embracing non-nuclear status.
Tarasiuk said Ukraine had decided to deactivate the missiles to remove the ecological danger they posed, and "to show the world that Ukraine has no plans to use nuclear blackmail."