President Readies Army For War Against Mafia

President Boris Yeltsin has ordered the Russian Army to prepare to help his crackdown on organized crime, a government official said Thursday. Back-up troops and military bases will have to be put under police control if needed in the fight against criminal gangs. The armed forces newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda said the provisional plans had been outlined in an order issued by Yeltsin, apparently in conjunction with a decree this week on fighting mafia-style criminal bands. An Interior Ministry official said the decree on army support, so far unpublished, had been signed in the last few days. The Krasnaya Zvezda article, signed by Interior Ministry Lieutenant-Colonel Alexei Petrov, did not estimate the scale of any army involvement in the crackdown, which seems likely to focus on major cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg. It said the Defense Ministry could transfer suitable troops to Interior Ministry control, help in the training of Interior Ministry forces and "hand over appropriate, unused" military bases "for their use."Interior Ministry troops and police were found wanting in October when confronting supporters of the Soviet-era parliament who launched an armed uprising against Yeltsin. In actions against organized crime, they could find themselves combating equally heavily armed groups. The transfer of relatively small numbers of army soldiers could give the Interior Ministry the expertise it needs without directly involving the army. Petrov said the Interior Ministry should change its instructions to police on the circumstances in which they are allowed to use arms. Petrov was clearly relieved that Yeltsin's decree would finally provide the power to confront an enemy with enormous influence, reaching, by Yeltsin's admission, the corridors of power. "It seems the authorities are ready today to conduct the decisive battle against crime," Petrov said. "Perhaps the time will come," he added, "when Russians feel safe in their own homes."