by Christopher Boian
MOSCOW, Sept 14 (AFP) - Russia said Tuesday it would give top priority to funding new efforts to fight terrorism a day after President Vladimir Putin unveiled plans to concentrate national political efforts on the same objective.
"New means are needed in the fight against terrorism," Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying. "We will allocate the necessary means to strengthen the fight against terrorism."
The successive announcements of political and economic reorientations toward new anti-terrorism measures came as Russia reeled from a series of major terror attacks that culminated in a school hostage crisis that killed hundreds.
Those attacks, which occurred in the space of little more than a week and also included the downing of two commercial airliners and a suicide bombing at a Moscow metro, put the Kremlin under heavy pressure to act against terror.
Kudrin said an additional 50 billion rubles (1.6 billion dollars) was being earmarked in Russia's 2005 budget by comparison with this year for the interior ministry, border guards as well as domestic and foreign intelligence agencies.
The defense ministry was also to receive a 107 billion-ruble (3.5 billion-dollar) boost in funding next year to be used for technological improvements and new defense contracts.
The 2005 draft budget, due to be considered by the State Duma lower house of parliament in the coming weeks, would also earmark 1.4 billion rubles (46 million dollars) for improving security in the Moscow subway system, Kudrin said, according to Interfax.
Overall funding for the armed forces, various policing bodies and the intelligence services, would be expanded by about 27 percent to more than 32 billion dollars, under the terms of the draft budget.
Sergei Stepashin, a former prime minister and current chairman of the powerful state audit chamber that supervises budgetary outlays, said the 2005 draft budget was balanced and results-oriented.
"The finance ministry has done major work here," Stepashin was quoted by Interfax as saying. "It is important now that these means are used as planned."
A top Russian official sought to allay concerns, particularly abroad, that a retooling of the country's political and economic plans meant Moscow would deviate from larger, macroeconomic reforms under way for the past decade.
"No changes are planned in economic policy, except for the intensification of economic advancement in the north Caucacus," Economics Minister German Gref said Tuesday, according to Interfax.
His mention of the north Caucacus was in reference to Putin's announcement Monday of the creation of a new federal commission charged with raising health, education and social welfare standards in the region.
Putin described the north Caucacus, where the Beslan school hostage crisis occurred, as a "strategic" zone for Russia but one where terrorism was gaining strength, hence the need for better social support to attack terrorism's roots.
Gref said that efforts in the region would focus on creation of new jobs, but did not offer further details on how the government would go about this.