House of Commons - Defence

Select Committee on Defence Third Report

THIRD REPORT

The Defence Committee has agreed to the following Report:

ARMS CONTROL AND DISARMAMENT (INSPECTIONS) BILL

SUMMARY

The 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty set limits on the numbers of combat aircraft, tanks, attack helicopters, armoured vehicles and artillery pieces which could be held within Europe (from the Atlantic to the Urals) by NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Following the break up of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, an Adapted Treaty was agreed in1999. At that time the UK make it clear that it would not ratify the Adapted Treaty until Russia (which had failed to comply with the 1990 Treaty) was in compliance with its new commitments.

Both treaties provided for an inspection regime so that the parties could check each other's compliance. The Arms Control and Disarmament (Inspections) Bill gives inspection teams visiting the UK the rights of access which the Treaty requires. The UK cannot ratify the Treaty until the Bill has been passed.

As well as introducing a new type of inspection, the Adapted CFE Treaty increases the number of the existing types of inspection that each country is liable to host. However, in practice it seems unlikely that the position for private owners and operators will be significantly different under the Adapted Treaty. This is for a number of reasons: in the past less than half of the existing liability has been taken up; inspecting states will bear the cost of conducting additional inspections, and as new members join NATO the pool of other states who might wish to inspect UK forces is likely to diminish.

Although Russia still has significantly more armoured combat vehicles in Europe's 'flank zone' (which includes Chechnya) than permitted under the 1990 Treaty, it would be in compliance with the ceilings for that area that would be introduced under the Adapted Treaty. However, Russia must also withdraw the remainder of its forces from Georgia and Moldova because those forces are there without the agreement of the respective host nations, and it agreed to do so when it signed the Adaptation Agreement. That withdrawal has been beset by delays and is incomplete, in part at least because of the existence of local separatists (in Abkhazia in Georgia, and in Transdniestr in Moldova) and how these have impinged upon the wider relationships between Russia and Georgia and Moldova.

Because the Bill would give the Government the ability to ratify the Treaty without further Parliamentary proceeding, consideration of the Bill itself needs to be focused on the question of ratification of the Treaty. Russia has a pivotal role not only in respect of its own compliance but also in creating the conditions that could encourage Georgia and Moldova to ratify the Treaty. The UK and the other state parties should encourage Russia to provide sufficient security to allow an inspection of its base at Gudauta in Georgia, for example, and should maintain pressure on Moldova and the Transdniestrian authorities to reach a settlement that would allow the train shipments needed to reduce Russia's presence at Colbasna.

At the same time, now that Russia's holdings of treaty-limited equipment appear to be at acceptable levels, care will be needed not to allow the differences between Russia and its two neighbours to hold the Adapted Treaty hostage. The Treaty promises real benefits in terms of increased security across Europe. Its implementation must not be allowed to be delayed longer than is genuinely necessary.

We recommend that the House should pass this Bill, not least to send a clear message that the UK sees the conditions for ratification now beginning to fall into place. It would allow timely UK ratification once that is appropriate, but the Government should also give a specific undertaking in the Second Reading debate on the Bill to notify the House at least 21 days in advance of its intention to proceed to ratification. This would allow Parliament to re-examine the issues at the time that that decision is taken, in its contemporary context.

Introduction

1. The Arms Control and Disarmament (Inspections) Act 1991 allowed the UK to ratify the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, which set limits on military equipment based in Europe and introduced a verification inspection regime. A new Arms Control and Disarmament (Inspections) Bill [Lords] now seeks to amend that 1991 Act to allow the UK to be able to ratify an Agreement made in 1999 to adapt the Treaty. The original 1991 Act made the necessary changes to UK legislation to permit the Treaty's ratification, and was therefore largely confined to giving the MoD the powers it needed to ensure other state parties to the Treaty could conduct military inspections at sites in the UK and at our bases in Germany. The thrust of the current Bill is to amend those provisions.

2. The Bill arrived in the House of Commons and was given its First Reading on 30 January 2003, having completed its stages in the Lords (where it had been introduced) between November 2002 and January 2003.[ 1] It is expected to have its Commons Second Reading after Easter. Our aim in undertaking this brief inquiry is to inform the debate on the Second Reading of the Bill, by examining its main provisions and updating a report by our predecessor Defence Committee on the Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe which examined the issues at the heart of this Bill.[2] Indeed, those considering the Bill might refer also to that report, much of which remains valid.

The main provisions of the Arms Control and Disarmament (Inspections) Bill

Clause 1 and Schedule 1; providing additional rights of entry to private land and property for inspection purposes, reflecting changes in the inspection regime introduced by the 1999 Adaptation Agreement:

adding new rights of entry for inspections of 'declared sites' under Section VII of the Treaty's Protocol on Inspections, and under Section IX (inspections of 'designated areas' holding equipment in excess of ceilings introduced by the Adaptation Agreement).

replacing specific references to Section VIII inspections ('challenge inspections') in the 1991 Act with more general references to all types of inspections.

amending the 1991 Act to reflect amendments to the Protocol on Inspections that are introduced by the Adaptation Agreement.

Clause 2; allowing for any further future amendments concerning inspections under the CFE Treaty to be made, by Order of Council. This would avoid the need for further primary legislation for that purpose.

Clause 3; permitting the Foreign Secretary to determine a date at which the new Act would come into force, and the Adaptation Agreement to be ratified.

3. As with the existing CFE Treaty, the 1999 Agreement will come into force only when all of its state parties—now 30 countries—ratify it. Until then, the provisions and equipment ceilings of the current Treaty remain in force. UK practice is not to ratify treaties without first having any necessary legislation enacted. The Bill therefore amends the provisions in the 1991 Act (principally concerning access rights for verification inspections in the UK) to reflect changes introduced by the Adaptation Agreement, which would then allow the UK government to ratify the Agreement, by Statutory Instrument not subject to parliamentary procedure,[ 3] "when the time is right".[4]

4. The 1990 CFE Treaty, borne out of nearly two decades of negotiations during the Cold War, put limits on NATO and Warsaw Pact holdings of five types of conventional equipment—tanks, armoured combat vehicles, heavy artillery, combat aircraft and attack helicopters—in Europe between the Atlantic coast and the Ural mountains. The aim was to make it impossible for one or other bloc to launch a large-scale surprise attack within Europe,[ 5] by setting verifiable limits on the numbers of such equipments and by preventing concentration of forces within particular areas or 'zones'—mainly along the boundary between each bloc and in the northern and southern flank areas.[6]

5. When the Treaty emerged, however, it was into a changing post-Cold War world, and in the years that followed it had to accommodate the collapse of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, the unification of Germany and the division of Czechoslovakia.[ 7] As a result, in place of the original 22 countries that signed the Treaty in Paris in 1990, there are now some 30 state parties.[8] The security environment within which the Treaty was constructed also changed significantly in the Caucasus, as previous Soviet republics and other separatist areas sought to assert their independence.

6. It was against that background that the parties to the Treaty negotiated an Agreement to adapt it to reflect the post-Cold War world. The Agreement, reached at the OSCE summit in Istanbul in November 1999, introduced changes in three main areas:

Individual countries (rather than the two Cold War blocs) were given equipment ceilings for the five types of conventional equipment—'national' ceilings (for a country's equipment irrespective of where in Europe it is held) and 'territorial' ceilings (equipment held within a country, of whatever nationality, to accommodate the stationing or deployment of one country's forces on another's territory).

Russia was given a more generous (territorial) sub-ceiling for armoured vehicles in the Flank Zone (whose southern element includes Chechnya), where it had consistently held equipment at levels in excess of those permitted by the existing Treaty.

The verification regime, within which the parties could inspect one another's equipment to check their declarations of equipment holdings, was extended and adjusted to reflect the new types of equipment ceilings.

7. As the previous Committee's report described, Russia in particular had had a long history of obfuscation and breaches of the terms of the existing 1990 Treaty.[ 9] When the Agreement to adapt the 1990 Treaty was signed in 1999, the UK made it clear that it would not ratify the Agreement until Russia had fulfilled its undertakings made at the Istanbul summit to withdraw its forces from Georgia and Moldova, and had complied with its Treaty obligations (its main breach was having excess equipment in the southern part of its Flank Zone—mainly in Chechnya). A similar line was adopted by our NATO allies and other states, and to date only Belarus and Ukraine have ratified the 1999 Adaptation Agreement.[10]

8. In this report we examine the changes to the inspection regime introduced by the1999 Adaptation Agreement (and the consequential amendments in that area introduced by the current Bill). We then consider the conditions under which the UK should ratify the Agreement (ratification depends on enactment of the Bill, and would subsequently require no further parliamentary procedure), including Russia's progress in reducing excess levels of equipment in Chechnya and meeting its commitments to Georgia and Moldova.

9. We obtained joint MoD/FCO memoranda, including updated information on Russia's non-compliance on which our predecessors reported in 2000. We also took oral evidence from Dr Bryan Wells and Col Philip Rouse of the MoD's Arms Control Secretariat, and Kate Smith, the deputy head of the Foreign Office's Security Policy Department.

Changes to the inspection regime

10. The existing CFE Treaty includes provisions for states regularly to exchange data on their equipment holdings, and for inspections by other states to verify those holdings. The Treaty provides for two main types of inspection:

Inspections of 'declared sites' under Section VII of the Treaty's Protocol on Inspections.[11] These are sites—training areas, ranges, maintenance and storage areas, airfields and so on[12]—that each state notifies as holding treaty-limited equipment.

'Challenge' inspections under Section VIII of the Protocol on Inspections to the Treaty. The inspecting state or states may delineate any area for such inspections of up to 65 square kilometres, provided that this excludes declared sites and that no two points lie more than 16 km apart.[13]

11. The liability of any state to host inspections under Section VII or Section VIII of the Protocol is determined by a formula that takes account of the size of declared forces and the number of military units (or 'objects of verification') which hold treaty-limited equipment. Our predecessors heard that the Adaptation Agreement would increase such inspection liabilities by a third,[ 14] as the annual inspection liability increases from 15% of objects of verification to 20%.[15] For the UK, with its 119 objects of verification, its liability to host inspections will rise from 18 to 24 a year (Figure 1 on the next page).

Figure 1: UK liability to host inspections[16]
	Under existing 1990 CFE Treaty	Under the 1999 Adapted Treaty
In UK (incl. Northern Ireland, Cyprus and Gibraltar)	13 Section VII inspections (of which up to 3 may be replaced by Section VIII inspections)	18 Section VII inspections (of which up to 4 may be replaced by Section VIII inspections)
In Germany	5 Section VII inspections	6 Section VII inspections
TOTAL	18 Section VII inspections (of which up to 3 may be Section VIII inspections instead)	24 Section VII inspections (of which up to 4 may be Section VIII inspections instead)

12. The Adapted Treaty would introduce a further type of inspection—of 'designated areas'—under a Section IX to be introduced to the Protocol on Inspections. Unlike the quotas of Section VII and Section VIII inspections, a state's liability to host Section IX inspections only arises when military exercises and temporary deployments cause equipment holdings to exceed its territorial ceiling under the Adapted Treaty:

'Exercises', which cause a territorial ceiling to be exceeded, will need to be notified to the Treaty's 'Joint Consultative Group' in Vienna 42 days in advance. Those exercises which are planned to exceed the ceiling for 21 days or more will be subject to a multi-national inspection. If the exercise continues to exceed the ceiling for more than 42 days, it will be considered a 'temporary deployment' (see below).

'Temporary deployments' which exceed territorial ceilings will also be liable to multi-national inspection at regular intervals. The host and deploying states will have to notify the purpose, area and estimated duration of the deployment and the numbers of treaty-limited equipments involved. If the size of a temporary deployment were to be greater than a 'basic' brigade level—153 tanks, 241 armoured combat vehicles and 140 artillery systems—the states would have to explain the circumstances, and other states could if they wished call a conference to discuss the issue.[17]

The designated areas in which equipment for 'exercises' or 'temporary deployments' is held could be up to 10,000 square kilometres.[ 18]

13. Clause 1 of the Bill amends the provisions of the 1991 Act to provide access rights for the MoD hosting a foreign inspection team undertaking any of the three types of inspection. That Act already gives such access powers for Section VIII challenge inspections, but further legislation is now needed because foreign inspection teams might also wish to visit 'declared' (Section VII) or 'designated' (Section IX) sites in the UK which include properties or land owned or operated by thirdparties. The 1990 Treaty, however, already provides for Section VII inspections, and so for these particular inspections the current Bill appears to remedy an omission (or at least a lack of farsightedness) in the 1991 Act. The Bill's Explanatory Notes state that—

Inspections of [Section VII] declared sites ¼ are not new to the Agreement on Adaptation. However, the view was taken when drafting the 1991 Act that rights of entry were not required for this type of inspection because the sites in question were wholly or mainly owned and operated by the Ministry of Defence. Since then, the involvement of private companies in the ownership or operation of parts of the sites in question has increased to the extent that it is now appropriate to provide for rights of entry, so as to ensure that an inspection could be complied with if requested.[ 19]

The inspection burden for the UK

14. We examined the likely impact of the prospective inspection regime for private owners or operators. During inspections (of whatever type), all doors to buildings, portacabins and containers wider than two metres must be able to be opened to allow the inspection team to verify whether they contain treaty-limited equipment.[ 20] All 'declared sites' subject to Section VII inspection are on MoD-owned land, we were told, but additional rights of entry are required to these sites because they have civilian organisations on them where a contractor leases or hires an area or building.[21] Although all of the UK's 94 declared sites (including UK bases in Germany) have contractors of one sort or another located on them,[22] we were told that many contractors' facilities would not have doorways of two metres or more.[23] The extent to which private owners might be effected by Section VIII inspections, on the other hand, depends entirely on whether other countries choose to conduct challenge inspections, and if so how they might define the areas they wish to cover. Since private owners are already liable, as is the MoD itself, to be inspected under Section VII and Section VIII of the Protocol, the key question is whether the extension of the inspection liability under the Adaptation Agreement will have any effect in practice.

15. Despite the existing potential for 13 Section VII/VIII inspections a year of sites in the UK (Figure 1), historically less than half that liability has been taken up (although all of the potential inspections of our bases in Germany are taken).[ 24] Over the last two years, there have been only 12 inspections—six in the UK itself and six in Germany—undertaken by Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Slovakia.[25] Although the Adaptation of the Treaty will increase the UK's overall inspection liability to 24 a year (Figure 1), the MoD did not expect the number actually undertaken to increase. This was because under the new arrangements the cost of undertaking those inspections that fell within the last 25% of the inspection liability will be met by the inspecting states rather than the host.[26] Another factor that may come increasingly into play is the expansion of NATO. NATO members do not inspect one another,[27] so as new members join the Alliance the pool of states who might wish to inspect UK forces is likely to diminish. Slovakia, for example, which inspected UK units in Germany in 2001,[28] hopes to join NATO in May 2004 (as one of the states invited to do so at the Prague summit).

16. In considering the burden of inspections for private owners and operators, we should differentiate between those liable to Section VIII inspections and those to Section VII inspections— contractors operating on MoD sites might reasonably be expected to be less perturbed about the latter type of inspection. Since the CFE Treaty came into force a decade ago there have been 192 such Section VII inspections.[ 29] But, significantly, over that time there have been only four Section VIII challenge inspections, which can only cover areas outside declared MoD sites.[30]

17. The Adaptation Agreement does however add a new category of potential inspection, under Section IX of the Protocol. The new Section IX inspections could be triggered when a state increases treatylimited equipment on its territory, either when allies deploy equipment into its territory for exercises or for peacesupport operations—both of which are permitted, within limits, under the Adaptation Agreement.[ 31] It would appear, however, that Section IX inspections would be unlikely in the UK. As with all state parties in Europe, the UK could not exceed its territorial ceilings if it repatriated all of its equipment held overseas, unless it also already held significant quantities of equipment from other countries.[32] And exercises in the UK, which involved allies deploying their equipment to the UK, would be unlikely to be of a scale that would breach the UK territorial ceilings (Figure 2).

Figure 2: UK ceilings under the Adapted CFE Treaty, and its equipment holdings as at January 2003 [ 33]
	Tanks	Armoured Combat Vehicles	Heavy Artillery
Territorial Ceiling[34]	843	3029	583
National Ceiling		3017
Actual Holdings[35]	560	2361	441
'Headroom' before territorial ceilings would be breached	283	668	142

18. It is clear that whatever the prescribed liability to inspections in the UK, in aggregate terms the real burden of inspections for private owners and contractors has so far been much less significant, and particularly so for those outside military bases. And where the main burden of such inspections has actually fallen, on MoD 'declared sites', it seems unlikely that the position for private operators will be significantly different after the Adaptation Agreement is implemented than before.

19. But there may be circumstances when private organisations or individuals would have to allow inspections of their properties. We wanted to establish what their rights would be in such cases. Inspection teams, up to nine strong for Section VII/VIII inspections,[ 36] need only give 36 hours' notice, and only when they arrive give details of where they want to visit, leaving the host just six hours to prepare those sites for inspection.[37] To ensure inspections run smoothly, the MoD has had to set up a dedicated team—the Joint Arms Control Implementation Group (JACIG)—of 77 specially trained personnel.[38] Although there have been few Section VIII challenge inspections, with their greater uncertainty those that do take place could be more difficult to manage. These inspections are intended to check for equipment being kept outside 'declared' military sites,[39] and could potentially cover large areas of a non-military nature. It is clear from the revised Protocol on Inspections, however, that the intrusiveness of the inspection regime is intended to be constrained by the purpose of the inspections—that is, to verify the presence or absence of tanks, helicopters and other large items of military equipment. Section VI of the Protocol, which deals with the rules for conducting inspections, gives rights of access only to structures with doors wider than two metres and "within which tanks [etc] ... are permanently or routinely present ",[40] and then "only in so far as necessary to confirm visually [the equipments'] number and type, model or version" [41] and with photography of interiors only with the escort team's permission.[42] And private operators on MoD (declared) sites might be further reassured by the Protocol's stipulation that—

In discharging their functions, inspectors shall not interfere directly with ongoing activities at the inspection site and shall avoid unnecessarily hampering or delaying operations at the inspection site or taking actions affecting safe operation.[ 43]

20. While inspection teams have in the past confined themselves to military installations, a police officer accompanies the inspection escort team with a warrant drawn up under the 1991 Act in order to ensure access to private property when it is permitted by the Protocol.[ 44] Under the existing Act it is a criminal offence to refuse or obstruct an inspection in an area covered by a warrant.[45] We were told, nevertheless, that the escort team leader himself could refuse inspectors' access to private sites to avoid any potentially "unwelcome situation" developing.[46] Specifically, the Protocol on Inspections permits the escort team to designate 'sensitive points', and such a designation need not be made before the inspectors arrive at a site.[47] However, such a designation is not intended as a way of smoothing the objections of private owners, and "discretion" would be used in applying it in such cases.[48] Similar arrangements would operate under a new Act, covering all three types of inspection.[49] The rights of private owners to refuse inspections would be heavily constrained in such circumstances, but no more so than under the existing inspection regime.

21. To date, there have been no reports of any refusal of access to civilian owned or operated facilities,[ 50] which is perhaps not surprising given the so far limited number of Section VIII challenge inspections and the restrictions conveyed in the guidance on inspections in the Protocol. If the number of such Section VIII inspections remains low, and (as we anticipate) Section IX inspections are not triggered, it might reasonably be expected that the demands placed on individual private owners, such as they are, will not be significantly increased by the enactment of the Bill.

Compliance with the Treaty

22. In considering when the UK should ratify the Adaptation Agreement, our predecessor Committee examined the level of compliance with the existing CFE Treaty. They found a number of breaches, and in particular a long-standing pattern of consistent breaches of the Treaty by Russia. These were in terms of: incomplete information disclosures, excess holdings of equipment, inappropriate designations of equipment as falling outside the Treaty, and refusals to allow some inspections.[ 51] That inquiry found that by the time of the January 2000 annual data exchange, only Russia remained in breach of its equipment obligations under the existing Treaty.[52] According to the UK MoD's assessment, Russia overall had exceeded its limits only in respect of artillery pieces (of which it had 21 too many [53]), but in its southern flank zone (which included Chechnya) it had significant excess equipment—400 excess tanks, 2,600 excess armoured combat vehicles and 600 excess artillery pieces.[54]

23. Russia's flank territory was central to the negotiations on the Adaptation Agreement. Under it the number of armoured combat vehicles[ 55] which Russia can deploy in the Russian part of the southern flank area (the existing flank ceilings also cover holdings in Armenia, Georgia and Moldova [56]) rose from 1,380 to 2,140. Our predecessors noted at the time, however, that without significant further equipment reductions Russia would continue to breach both its equipment ceiling in the original Treaty and the new limits of the Adaptation Agreement.[57]

24. In this current inquiry we examined what progress Russia has made in reducing its flank equipment holdings. The OSCE's conference to review the operation of the Treaty in 2001 concluded that "in general [it] was operating and being implemented in a satisfactory manner". However, the Treaty's 'Joint Consultative Group' and its working group responsible for compliance are, as the MoD described them, "more philosophical than judgemental",[ 58] and it would appear to fall to individual states (and NATO) to provide more analytical judgements about states' compliance. That means that differences of interpretation are sometimes not resolved.

25. Accordingly, at the time of our predecessors' inquiry in 2000, the UK MoD had a different view of Russia's holdings to that declared in Russia's statistical returns. That is still the case. Faced with continued Russian refusals to permit inspections in Chechnya on security grounds,[ 59] the MoD's (and NATO's) current assessments have been informed by indirect measurement: they have undertaken inspections of units outside the flank zone targeted on units which have been known to have provided treaty-limited equipment 'temporarily located' inside the zone, to provide a guide to current dispositions in Chechnya.[60] On both UK and Russian counts, Russia still has significantly too many armoured combat vehicles in the flank zone, but it would satisfy the ceilings that would be introduced with the Adapted Treaty, as Figure 3 shows.

Figure 3: Russian holdings of Armoured Combat Vehicles in the Flank Zone, as at January 2003[61]
Against the 1990 CFE Treaty:
	Current Treaty limit	1380
	Russian declared holdings	2256	(An excess of 876)
	UK assessment of Russian holdings	2059	(An excess of 679)
Against the 1999 Adapted Treaty:
	Adapted Treaty limit	2140
	UK assessment of Russian holdings	2084	(56 within the ceiling)

26. When the Adaptation Agreement was signed in 1999, the then Foreign Secretary set conditions for the UK's ratification of the Agreement, as follows—

... It is crucial that the CFE Treaty remains credible. Entry into force of the adapted Treaty, if its limits were still being breached, would undermine this credibility. We trust that the credibility of the CFE Treaty will soon be restored. It is on that basis that the UK has signed the [adapted] Treaty. We would hope to ratify it early, but the time at which we do so will depend on the levels of all parties' compliance with the limits that have been agreed.[ 62]

On the basis of the obligations of the Adaptation Agreement, the MoD/FCO told us that the current position was that "Russia can be said to be in compliance with its commitments in the Flank".[ 63] We clearly welcome that improved position. On this particular test, UK ratification need not be delayed. In reaching such a conclusion, we make no observation on the wider conflict in Chechnya, or the prospect of its settlement after the recent referendum there on a new constitution. The conflict should not in itself prevent the implementation of the Adaptation Agreement, whose provisions may in fact act to reduce instability by constraining the deployment of forces in the region.

Russia's commitments to Georgia and Moldova

27. When the Adaptation Agreement was signed in 1999, the UK and other states indicated that their ratification would also depend on Russia meeting its obligations made at the Istanbul summit towards Georgia and Moldova. Russia had treaty-limited equipment stationed in Moldova and Georgia, in contravention of the original CFE Treaty, which requires host states to have given their agreement to such deployments.[ 64] The negotiation of the Adaptation Agreement presented these countries with an opportunity to get firmer commitments from Russia to withdraw its forces. At the insistence of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova, the Agreement emphasised the need for a host state to give its "express consent" for foreign forces being deployed in its territory. In last-minute negotiations at the Istanbul summit, Georgia also extracted a Russian agreement to: cut its equipment stationed there to the level of a 'basic temporary deployment' under the Treaty—153 tanks, 241 armoured combat vehicles and 140 artillery systems—by 31 December 2000; to close two of its four bases (Vaziani and Gudauta) by 1 July 2001; and to complete negotiations during 2000 about the future of the Russian bases at Batumi and Akhalkalaki.[65] Russia also agreed to remove or destroy all its treaty-limited equipment from Moldova by the end of 2001, and to completely withdraw its forces by the end of 2002.[66]

28. In the Bill's debate in Committee in the Lords, the Foreign Office Minister Baroness Symons reported that as well as complying with its treaty limits on equipment in the flank, Russia had removed its treatylimited equipment from Moldova and Georgia.[ 67] But, as she described, Russia's withdrawal of its forces from Georgia and Moldova had been beset by delays and was incomplete. Progress with withdrawals is tied, in part at least, to the existence of local separatists (in Abkhazia in Georgia, and in Transdniestr in Moldova) and how these have impinged upon the relationships between Russia and Georgia and Moldova.[68]

1 The Bill completed its House of Lords Second Reading on 25 November 2002 (HL Deb, cols 606-613), Debate in Committee on 7 January (HL Deb, cols 843-897) and Third Reading on 30 January 2003. Back

2 Twelfth Report of Session 1999-2000, The Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, HC 295 Back

3 Clause 3(2) of the Bill (see Explanatory Notes accompanying the Bill, para 20) Back

4 Further Explanatory Memorandum accompanying the Bill, para 2 Back

5 The Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, para 4 Back

6 These were set out in a map reproduced in The Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, page ix. The northern and southern flank areas, though discontinuous, together form the 'flank zone'. Back

7 The Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, para 5 Back

8 ibid Back

9 The Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, paras 13-27 Back

10 Ev 2, para 9 Back

11 The Protocol on Inspections is set out in Article 27 of the Agreement on Adaptation, which is available on the OSCE website (www.osce.org/docs) Back

12 Protocol on Inspections, Section I, para 1(M) Back

13 Protocol on Inspections, Section I, para 1 (N) Back

14 The Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, para 41 Back

15 Q 96 Back

16 Ev 6, para 37; Q 51 Back

17 The Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, para 40 Back

18 Protocol on Inspections, Section I, para 1(O) Back

19 'Explanatory Notes' for the Lords consideration of the Bill, para 9 (the Commons 'Explanatory Notes' (para 10) are more concise on this matter). Back

20 Ev 7, para 42; Protocol on Inspections, Section VI, para 27 Back

21 Ev 7, para 42; Ev 21, paras 14-16 Back

22 Ev 21, para 14 Back

23 Ev 21, para 16 Back

24 Ev 7, para 39 Back

25 Ev 6, para 36 Back

26 Ev 7, para 39; The Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (Ev 24, para 26) Back

27 Q 96 Back

28 Ev 6, para 36 Back

29 Ev 21, para 17 Back

30 ibid Back

31 see The Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, para 34 Back

32 Except for the US and Canada, the states' territorial ceilings are at least equal to their national ceilings, to allow repatriation of equipment deployed abroad (see The Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, paras 28-31 and Figure 4). Back

33 The Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (Ev 22); Ev 22, para 22 Back

34 Territorial ceilings do not cover combat aircraft or attack helicopters because of their easy mobility which would make territorial constraints impractical and difficult to verify (see The Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (para 29)). Back

35 'Actual Holdings' include UK equipment based within the European area covered by the CFE Treaty; data reported each year in Defence Statistics. Back

36 Protocol on Inspections, Section VI, paras 4 and 5 Back

37 Qq 56, 63 Back

38 Q 60 Back

39 Q 65 Back

40 Protocol on Inspections, Section VI, para 27 Back

41 ibid, para 29 Back

42 ibid, para 39 Back

43 ibid, para 25 Back

44 Q 68 Back

45 Ev 20, paras 9-10 Back

46 Q 74 Back

47 Ev 20, para 12 Back