March 28, 1999
NEW YORK In another show of protest over the fighting in Kosovo, Russia's
Defense Ministry said it will stop cooperating with the United States on the
Y2K computer problem.
A ministry spokesman made the announcement Friday to a government committee
that is tackling the problem, according to the Interfax news agency.
In Washington, Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Special
Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem, urged Russia to reconsider.
"I think it's very shortsighted and potentially dangerous," he said. "It
doesn't mean something bad is going to happen. But it means that our chances
of preventing something bad from happening just went down."
Western defense officials had been working with Russia on upgrading its
computers out of fear that the cash-starved country hasn't done enough to
tackle the millennium bug. Some believe that faulty computers could trigger
false alarms on Russia's nuclear early warning systems. Accidental launches of
nuclear missiles are highly unlikely, according to experts in both countries,
but they urged extra precautions until the computer problem is fixed.
As part of the effort, the two countries had planned to station experts in
each other's nuclear sites before and after Jan. 1, 2000. The program was to
be mostly U.S.-funded.
Arthur Young, APR
Communication Management
1465 Kearny Street
San Francisco, CA 94133-3429
415-924-9250 VM
Direct: 415-981-5743 yoarthur@jps.net
