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The meeting discussed and approved the main principles of the government policy in the field of military development in the period up to 2010.

A key aspect of the matter, the President stressed, is realistic assessment of the military-political situation and a clear awareness of the potential threats to national security. He noted that the state must learn to concentrate effort and resources on joint tackling of operational, logistic and technical tasks.

The President said that the structural reorganisation and consolidation of the Armed Forces and other agencies must be accompanied by a relentless policy of shedding non-core activities and overlap of functions.

The military organisation must be geared to a strictly defined range of defence tasks, and this is the principled position of the state, Vladimir Putin stressed. And he went on to explain that the military organisation of the state must include only the Armed Forces and other troops and military units directly involved in the military sphere. The military elements of other ministries and agencies will be consistently reduced, he said.

During the last two years a number of serious measures have been implemented in the field of military development, Vladimir Putin noted. He recalled, among other things, the serious organisational and staff measures, the transformation of the Strategic Missile Forces into an armed service and the creation of the Space Forces.