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- <text id=92TT0665>
- <title>
- Mar. 30, 1992: World Notes:Former Soviet Union
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Mar. 30, 1992 Country's Big Boom
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 40
- World Notes
- FORMER SOVIET UNION
- A Dangerous Divide
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Gloom descended as leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent
- States ended their summit meeting in Kiev last week without
- managing to defuse a situation that threatens the already
- fragile structure of the nascent organization: the growing
- rancor between Russia and Ukraine.
- </p>
- <p> Their relations deteriorated two weeks ago when Ukrainian
- President Leonid Kravchuk announced that he was halting the
- transfer of tactical nuclear weapons to Russia. Kiev had pledged
- to hand over all such weapons by July, but so far, only around
- half of the roughly 2,500 tactical weapons have been shipped.
- In Moscow, Boris Yeltsin retaliated by creating his own defense
- ministry, the essential precursor to a separate Russian army.
- Ukraine then refused to take any part in a unified command
- structure. A proposal to set up a group of military observers
- to help resolve ethnic conflicts was rejected by both Ukraine
- and Azerbaijan.
- </p>
- <p> The summit's failure to resolve any important questions,
- warned Kravchuk, meant that "the entire existence of the C.I.S.
- is questionable."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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