Western Alliance

Two NATO generals arrived Sunday in the first visit to the Soviet Union by high-ranking military officials of the Western alliance. U.S. Gen. John R. Galvin, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's supreme military commander in Europe, and Norwegian Gen. Vigleik Eide, chairman of the alliance's military committee, will hold several days of talks with government and military officials.

Russia's defense minister assured NATO at a Colorado Springs meeting that Moscow is not adopting a more aggressive nuclear stance and remains committed to cooperation with the Western alliance. Sergei B. Ivanov downplayed reports last week quoting a Russian Defense Ministry document as saying Moscow might rethink its nuclear strategy. He was also quoted in Moscow as saying Russia did not rule out a preemptive attack, though, he said in Colorado, it would be nonnuclear.

A code expert from West Germany's mission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Brussels has been seized on suspicion of spying for East Germany. The case may have done enormous damage to the Western Alliance, officials said. The officer, whose name was not given, is being held in West Germany on suspicion of having passed alliance secrets to East Germany for more than 20 years.

Retired Army Gen. Colin L. Powell, one of the architects of the Western alliance victory in the 1991 Gulf War, said he would not run for president in 2000. Powell, a Republican, told reporters he was more certain of his decision than Michael Jordan was of his this week to retire from professional basketball.

Danish Defense Minister Hans Haekkerup will succeed Bernard Kouchner of France in mid-January as the U.N. administrator in Kosovo, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced. Kouchner has served as U.N. administrator since the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization took control of Kosovo in June 1999 after the Western alliance's 78-day air war against Yugoslavia.

A NATO airstrike destroyed a compound housing a Taliban leader believed responsible for a wave of violence across southern Afghanistan, killing the commander and at least 10 other suspected militants, the Western alliance said. NATO said militants continued to cross into Afghanistan from neighboring Pakistan "in fairly substantial numbers." Col. Tom Collins, a NATO spokesman, said fighters from North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia have been captured in Afghanistan.

Slovenia continues its low-profile efforts to seek greater integration with Western Europe when the country's prime minister, Janez Drnovsek, visits North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters here Wednesday to sign the alliance's Partnership for Peace framework document. The move marks the first such link between the Western Alliance and a country that was once part of Yugoslavia.

Saddleback College and the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library will share a $12,000 grant from the Western Alliance of Arts Administrators to jointly present multicultural programming.

Uzbekistan on Wednesday signed a Partnership for Peace accord with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the 22nd country to opt for a military and political cooperation agreement with the Western alliance. The agreement enables the Central Asian nation to develop closer relations that may include exchanges of military information and pooling of forces in joint exercises or humanitarian operations.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization confirmed that it does not plan to base large numbers of foreign combat troops in former Warsaw Pact countries that join the Western alliance. The move was designed to calm Russian fears about NATO's expansion plans. "In the current and foreseeable security environment" NATO does not intend any "additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces," the alliance said in a statement issued in Brussels. Russian President Boris N.