IDF prepares for proposed budget cuts

Amos Harel and Amnon Barzilai, Ha'aretz Correspondents, 7.9.00

The IDF is planning to cut back two-thirds of the reserve-duty days allocated to operational army duties as a result of Prime Minister Ehud Barak's decision to back the Finance Ministry in slashing the defense budget.

Some reserve soldiers will be replaced by regular army soldiers at the expense of their training exercises, the IDF says. But in some places the army will have to seriously reduce the number of soldiers involved in routine security because there are not enough regular army units to replace the reserve battalions.

The army and the Defense Ministry began to discuss the implications of Barak's decision yesterday. Senior army sources told Ha'aretz that although the decision is not yet official and the army will fight it tooth and nail, they believe it will be approved.

"In the past half year we have issued permission to sign contracts based on promises from the prime minister," one source said. "If we had known this would be the situation, we would have delayed some of the projects." Some contracts with Israeli industries will be canceled even if the Defense Ministry will have to pay damages for breach of contract.

The sources say the IDF are convinced there will no way to avoid cutting back on manpower, The cuts may force the army to dismiss additional career officers despite a General Staff decision to avoid additional dismissals.

A paper prepared in the office of Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak shows that the size of the increment promised to the defense system is NIS 200 million higher than the figures presented by the treasury. That was based on the "auto pilot," a mechanism used to update the budgets of government ministries, relative to the size of their budgets and taking account of inflation and other parameters.

According to treasury figures, the supplement to the Defense Ministry due to this mechanism is NIS 690 million, while according to the paper in the prime minister's office, the auto pilot increment as presented by the treasury is NIS 877.

Barak decided that an additional sum of NIS 688 million, which represent two-thirds of the NIS 950 million cutback in the 2000 budget, would be included in the auto pilot. At the time of the cutback a year ago, Barak promised it would be restored in the 2001 budget.

Hence the auto pilot increment promised to the defense system, according to the paper, is NIS 1.575 billion. According to the paper, Barak decided to give the defense ministry only half of the auto pilot increment promised it, because of the controversial view that the withdrawal from Lebanon freed up funds of NIS 688 million.