Lebed Seeks Pact With Nato

On his first visit to the west, Lebed urged the Atlantic alliance not to hurry with its plan to take in new members, but he also made clear that Moscow was moving away from its previous stance of implacable opposition to the idea.

Javier Solana, the Nato secretary-general, who received Lebed at alliance headquarters in Brussels, rejected any explicit link between Russia-Nato ties and enlargement. But Nato officials hailed Lebeds keenness to negotiate over the future of European security, and they said the differences between the two sides did not appear to be unbridgeable.

Lebed warned that the extension of Nato towards Russias borders could sour feelings in Moscow towards existing arms control agreements on strategic and conventional weapons.

 

However Solana said that Nato would table a formal proposal for modifying the treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe in order to take account of Russian concerns.

Lebed said that the main thing is not to hurry with expansion plans, which are expected to add at least three nations to the 16-nation bloc by the end of the century.

Solana said Natos internal reforms, its enlargement eastwards and its relationship with Russia should progress in parallel, with the hope costs.

Financial Times

Inflation, currently 1.5 per cent, has shown little sign of rising, despite the extraordinary growth performance - with GDP set to increase 7 per cent this year, against 10 per cent in 1995. Public debt as a ratio of GDP, while still above the 60 per cent required by Maastricht, is coming closer to the target. The quandary for the central bank is whether to stem the flow of foreign money by letting interest rates fall, which could fuel credit growth, or by allowing the currency to appreciate, which could affect the rate at which Ireland enters Emu. Economists believe the bank is also reluctant to see the currency move higher because it wants to avoid a revaluation of the green punt, which determines the value of EU subsidies to Irish farmers. Farmers, always an important political lobby, are already incensed by the damage done by the BSE crisis. Mr Han De Jong, chief economist at stockbrokers Goodbody said: