RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE  12 March 1999

MORE HARSH WORDS ABOUT NATO. Yeltsin "was and remains
negative" about NATO's eastward expansion, presidential
spokesman Yakushkin told reporters on 12 March. Foreign
Minister Igor Ivanov said the landmark event of three
former Warsaw Pact countries--the Czech Republic, Hungary,
and Poland--joining the alliance is "rather sad" and a
"movement in the wrong direction." Colonel-General Leonid
Ivashov, head of the Defense Ministry's Department for
International Military Cooperation, told Interfax that
Russia is not planning any new military measures but
"NATO's further enlargement, which is diminishing Russia's
Shevtsov, commander of the Moscow military district,