Colonel Ken Guillory, U.S. Army, commanded OSIA's European Operations Command during the RLVP period. A field artillery officer, he commanded a battalion at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma; fought in Operation Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia; and served as a civil-military liaison officer to the German army under the US Army's Pershing II command. Capable in German and Russian, Guillory holds a master's degree in Soviet area studies from Georgetown University.

On the difference between normal operations and the tempo during RLVP: "The difference, of course, was the intensity of the operation. We were doing a greater number of inspections in a shorter period. What made the operation different was the coordination needed to get people briefed, transported to and from the inspection site, debriefed, and then having to coordinate everything with several other nations simultaneously. It was a major coordination problem.

"The one problem that you try to plan for, but there is really nothing you can do about, is the weather. RLVP, of course, happened from mid-November to mid-March, right in the middle of the Russian and East European winter. That made it hard. The difficulty was not as great in the East European countries: Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. There ground transportation was always available. In Russia, however, the only entry point was Moscow. To get from Moscow to the majority of the CFE Treaty sites, the team had to fly. That presented us some problems. I expected that at least once, if not more, we were going to have trouble reaching a Russian site in time to conduct the inspection, simply because of the weather. And that, of course, was out of our hands. The other problem was that it was really very difficult to do a CFE inspection after dark. You needed daylight. In the winter the days are shorter, so you had to plan the inspection to cover all the areas you needed to cover and see within available daylight. Our inspectors know how to do it, and they're good at it, but it is just more difficult inspecting after August or September when the days are longer.

"Some inspections were 'paired.' That's the term we use for inspections when we take representatives from Eastern European treaty partners. In some cases we will actually have Eastern officers on our teams. For example, we had some Hungarian officers with us on an inspection in Romania. There is no quota for how many times we do it. We don't have to do it at all, but it's good for us. It helps us a lot. Also, it gives them exposure and experience in working with Allied teams. The United States is not the only country that does this."

On incorporating an analysis of the CFE Treaty baseline experience into RLVP operations: "When we did the original plan, we did the commander's estimate portion and one of the things we looked at was how we , at EO, had handled the baseline operations. What we found out was that we had actually handled the inspection pretty well. We had organized the teams properly, we had the right number, and we were able to conduct virtually all of the required inspections. Remember, the treaty's baseline period was in the summertime, so the weather was a lot better. On the escort side, we were well prepared, although the Eastern states did not inspect us as much as we thought they would. On the liaison officer side, where we went to the different NATO countries every time there was an inspection there were problems. During baseline we had LNO teams standing by in several locations, and it was a waste of manpower. It wasn't the best way to do things. For the RLVP, because of the distance, we are keeping an LNO team in place in Turkey, with the rest based here in Germany. We have more flexibility that way."

PROBLEMS DURING TREATY IMPLEMETATION

In the implementation of any multinational treaty, problems arise as a result of changes in the international situation, changes in one or more of the signatory nations' internal conditions, or, more commonly, differing national interpretations of treaty rights and obligations. A treaty may have unresolved or ambiguous issues embedded in the text or protocols that come to the fore only during implementation. Implementation of the CFE Treaty certainly proved these generalizations true. Five problems surfaced from July 1992, entry into force, to November 1995, the end of the reduction period:

• Inspector access at declared sites.
• Cost of treaty-limited equipment (TLE) reductions.
• Accounting for TLE among the Soviet Union's successor states.
• Destruction of Russian TLE located east of the Urals.
• Redefinition of treaty's zonal restrictions for stationing weapons in the flank Redefinition of the treaty's areas of Russia and Ukraine.

ACCESS TO DECLARED SITES

The first significant problem, inspector access to declared sites, arose shortly after the treaty entered into force in July 1992. During the initial inspections, Russian escorts routinely granted inspectors access to the designated OOVs but often denied them access to the entire declared site. These denials occurred also, to a lesser degree, in Belarus and Ukraine. In mid-August, Russia and all other treaty states presented, as required by the treaty, a revised set of data charts, listing their declared sites, OOVs, units, and TLE. For most of its CFE sites, Russia now stated that all its OOVs and declared sites had identical boundary lines. Previously, Russia had stated in its treaty data submissions that it had many declared sites (military bases, garrisons, or installations) containing five, six, or more OOVs (regiments or brigades). The new Russian treaty data charts signaled a major change, one that had the potential of limiting the CFE inspection team's access while on site. Also, the Russian data charts essentially nullified the treaty's carefully negotiated compromise on the inspection team's right of access to inspect both the designated OOV and the declared site.

Unrest in the Soviet Union led to its breakup and the addition of eight new states to the CFE Treaty

A U.S.-led multinational inspection in Romania.

While inspectors argued and documented the issue of inspection rights and inspectable sites, diplomatic delegations discussed the problem in Moscow, Washington, and major European capitals. The JCG held a series of meetings seeking resolution. In late October, Ambassador Lynn M. Hansen, U.S. CFE Treaty Negotiator, flew to Moscow for discussions on the issue with senior Russian diplomatic and military officials. In those meetings, Russian officials declared categorically their intention to return to the original treaty interpretation and to comply with the CFE Treaty's definition of a declared site.¹⁴ Four weeks later, in its December 15, 1992, data update, Russia stated that it had 431 OOVs and 299 declared sites. Subsequent inspections of Russian CFE sites in 1993 and 1994 by NATO nation teams revealed that on this issue--the inspection team's right of access to the declared site and the common areas--Russia had, indeed, reverted to the complex treaty understanding that had been negotiated and ratified.¹⁵

It is important to recognize that in the resolution of this treaty problem, the process worked. Inspectors raised and documented the issue on-site; they declared ambiguities, which were recorded in the legal process of verifying compliance with the CFE Treaty. Once documented, the problem was examined by the respective national verification agency directors and staffs. Then senior officials in Moscow, Washington, and other capitals evaluated the issue and prepared government positions. In Vienna, national representatives to the JCG presented their views and worked in committees and joint sessions on a resolution acceptable to all treaty states. In this case, the treaty problem was caused by a change in Russia's designation of its national force data. It was resolved when Russia, challenged by the United States and other treaty states, decided to return to the data format used by all other signatory states, thus acknowledging the original intent of the treaty. Once the data were in the correct format, inspectors could confirm, through direct observation on-site, that the site, unit, and nation were in compliance with the treaty.