Timing Timing Timing.
Russia plans major maneuvers.
Kindling The Fire That Has Yet To Burn.
And Little Norway With It's Lost Sense Of
Direction Other Than To Permeate It's Inner Sanctom
Of High Inflation Through Clubbish Immigration Laws
That Make It The Kuwaite Of The North Sea Wallowing Blissfully
Whilst Slaughtering Whales For " Scientific Purposes. "
BALK!!
Updated 4:49 PM ET June 15, 1999
MOSCOW, June 15 (UPI) Russia will conduct wide-scale, weeklong military maneuvers
next week aimed at rehearsing defense tactics against a hypothetical attack from the West,
the Russian Defense Ministry says.
Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev will take charge of the exercises, code-named
West-99, that will place virtually all units in western Russia on high alert and involve the
armed forces of neighboring Belarus.
The Defense Ministry declined today to link the maneuvers, which will last from Monday to
Saturday, with the situation in the Balkans.
While not stating so openly, Russia is also alarmed by Norway's decision to host
NATO-led exercises in Finnmark, the northern part of Norway, only 100 miles (160 km)
west of Russia's border.
Norway claims that planning began years ago for the Barents Peace-99 exercise, which
started this week, although its aims echo NATO's situation in Kosovo: In the exercise, a
hypothetical multinational peacekeeping operation is launched in a hostile environment after
an ethnic conflict in two imaginary states creates a tide of refugees and a humanitarian crisis.
Norwegian, U.S., British and German forces, as well as units from the Netherlands,
Denmark, Poland, and neutral Sweden and Finland, are taking part in the operation, which
encompasses the army, navy and air force.
Norwegian officials say the aim of the exercise is to improve coordination in humanitarian
and rescue operations.
For decades, Norway had declared Finnmark off limits to NATO maneuvers so as not to
create tension with the Soviet Union.
Until this year, when Poland joined the military alliance, Norway was the only NATO
member sharing a land border with Russia in the west.
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