CIA-RDP96-00789R000600840001-3

Soviets Announce Mongolia Troop Pullout
Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA RDP96-00789R00060 840001-3
Reuter
MOSCOW, March 7-The Soviet
Union said today it is withdrawing
75 percent of its troops from Mon-
golia in an apparent concession to
China on the eve of May's Chinese-
Soviet summit.
-
Foreign Ministry- spokesman
Gennadi Gerasimov said the cut
was in addition to an announcement
by Mongolia this week that it would
reduce its armed forces by 13,000
and trim its military budget by 11
percent.
"In agreement with the Mongo-
lian government we are bringing
back to the motherland three-quar-
ters of Soviet troops based there,"
Gerasimov said at a news confer-
ence. "All airborne detachments
will be withdrawn and disbanded."
Gerasimov did not detail the total
number of Soviet soldiers in Mon-
0. 500
SOVIET UNION
MILES
Ulan Bator
MONGOLIA
Beijing + d
CHINA
INDIA
TAIWANO)
BY DAVE COOK -- THE WASHINGTON POST
golia, although recent Western es-
timates put the figure at about
50,000, grouped into four divisions.
Soviet President Mikhail Gorba-
chev promised in a speech to the
United Nations in December to
bring home a "major part" of Soviet
troops from Mongolia, without giv-
ing more details, as part of far-
reaching unilateral troop cuts in
Europe and Asia.
Western experts saw the move as
a concession to China, which has
long urged the withdrawal of all
Moscow's forces from Mongolia, a
sparsely populated area as big as
the whole of Western Europe sand-
wiched between the two communist
giants.
The troops were sent to Mon-
golia at the request of its Soviet-
backed government in 1966 at a
time when once-close Sino-Soviet
relations had been soured by ideo-
logical and foreign policy disputes.
Amid signs of an improvement in
these ties, the Soviet Union an-
nounced in 1987 that it was pulling
out some of the troops. Western
experts said 8,000 to 11,000 sol-
diers were withdrawn.
Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R000600840001-3