te : the Intelligence Community estimates that defense spending in
Russia fell by about 10% in real terms in 1996, reducing Russian
defense outlays to about one-sixth of peak Soviet levels in the late
1980s (1997 est.)

Military expenditures - percent of GDP: NA%

Transnational Issues

Disputes - international: inherited disputes from former USSR
including sections of the boundary with China; islands of Etorofu,
Kunashiri, and Shikotan and the Habomai group occupied by the Soviet
Union in 1945, administered by Russia, claimed by Japan; Caspian Sea
boundaries are not yet determined among Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakstan,
Russia, and Turkmenistan; potential dispute with Ukraine over Crimea;
Estonian and Russian negotiators reached a technical order agreement
in December 1996, which Estonia is prepared to sign and ratify in
January 1997; Estonia had claimed over 2,000 sq km of Russian
territory in the Narva and Pechora regions - based on boundary
established under the 1920 Peace Treaty of Tartu; based on the 1920
Treaty of Riga, Latvia had claimed the Abrene/Pytalovo section of the
border ceded by the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic to Russia in
1944; has made no territorial claim in Antarctica (but has reserved
the right to do so) and does not recognize the claims of any other
nation; dispute with Lithuania over the position of the riparian and
maritime boundary with Kaliningrad Oblast; Svalbard is the focus of a
maritime boundary dispute in the Barents Sea between Norway and Russia

Illicit drugs: limited cultivation of cannabis and opium poppy, mostly
for domestic consumption; government has active eradication program;
increasingly used as transshipment point for Southwest and Southeast
Asian opiates and cannabis and Latin American cocaine to Western
Europe and the US
______________________________________________________________________

RWANDA

Introduction

Current issues: following the outbreak of genocidal strife in Rwanda
in April 1994 between Tutsi and Hutu factions, more than 2 million
refugees fled to neighboring Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda and Democratic
Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire; according to the UN High
Commission on Refugees, in 1996 and early 1997 nearly 1,300,000 Hutus
returned to Rwanda; of these, 720,000 returned from Zaire, 480,000
from Tanzania, 88,000 from Burundi, and 10,000 from Uganda

@Rwanda:Geography

Location: Central Africa, east of Democratic Republic of the Congo

Geogr