Excerpt from Memorandum of Conversation between US Congressional Delegation and Speaker of the Russian State Duma Gennady Seleznev October 21 1996 Nunn have for a number ofyears now maintained the position that expansion of NATO must follow and not precede the process of expanding EU membership In the near future I do not think that Russia represents any kind of threat to the countries of Eastern and Central Europe They speak in favor of expanding NATO for a different reason thinking that this step would encourage the expanding of democracy in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe and not in order to stand up to some imagined threat 1 from my point of view represent the minority opinion and do not represent the opinion of the administration From a purely military point of view one can quote the opinion and the position expressed in his time by Napoleon when he said that ifyou succeed in attracting the opponent to your side that is already a guarantee of success lfwe want to improve the NATO structure in the military sense then we should get rid ofa number of members instead of adding new ones I could name several candidates for exclusion from NATO But I will just not do it In a purely military sense all our commanders would be able to tell you privately that by expanding NATO at the present moment and simultaneously cutting the defense budget we are not achieving our set goal of increasing the battle readiness of the alliance Russia has understood this situation well because we can see what it is doing in terms of the budget trying to improve its economic affairs We continue to negotiate about agreements regarding the deployment of armed forces and the deployment of nuclear weapons while I think our two countries should focus their attention on the political and aSpects related to the problems of NATO expansion p 89 Fond 10100 opis 15 delo 2 Translated by Svetlana Savranskaya                     National Security Archive    Suite 701  Gelman Library  The George Washington University    2130 H Street  NW  Washington  D C  20037    Phone  202 994‐7000  Fax  202 994‐7005  nsarchiv@gwu edu